Wednesday’s deadly collision between an American Airlines flight and a military helicopter outside Washington, D.C., followed the Army’s highest rate of flight mishaps in more than a decade.
Army aviation saw 17 class A mishaps, accidents that killed someone or caused more than $2.5 million worth of damage during fiscal year 2024. Fifteen of those were during flights, and two were ground aircraft mishaps.
That followed nine flight and one aircraft ground incidents in 2023 and four flight and four ground mishaps in 2022.
"FY24 will be a year that Army Aviation looks back on in hopes of never repeating," stated a dismal Army report, released just before the deadly collision near Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people.
THIRD SOLDIER INSIDE BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER INVOLVED IN DC MIDAIR COLLISION IDENTIFIED
Fiscal year 2024 saw the most class A mishaps per 100,000 flight hours since 2007. Nine soldiers and one civilian died in flight mishaps, while one contractor died in an aircraft ground accident, according to the report.
The 1.9 class A mishaps per 100,000 was nearly four times the rate of 2022, 0.5 per 100,000.
In an average year, Army aviation mishaps kill six crew members.
There were 66 class A-C mishaps, meaning aviation incidents where over $60,000 worth of damage was incurred or personnel were injured enough to miss work.
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The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter involved in the Washington, D.C.-area crash is not the force’s most accident-prone aircraft; it was only involved in one of the 2024 major incidents, while nine such incidents involved AH-64 Apaches.
Last week’s crash was the first class A mishap for fiscal year 2025.
The Navy had 11 Class A aviation mishaps in FY 2024, and the Marine Corps had six. Five Marines died in a CH-53E Super Stallion crash last February. The Air Force, which has more aviators than any other branch, had 20 class A mishaps in FY 2024.
The Army attributed the spike in incidents to an "ineffective safety culture."
Its aviation review called for more recording and reviewing of flight footage with superiors after it found that the average flight experience is down 300 hours per aviator from 2013. While crew experience was not cited in every incident, the Army deemed it "a hazard that must be considered."
"While it’s understandable to have concerns about "big brother" monitoring, the primary goal of flight data analysis is to improve safety, not to punish or scrutinize individual pilots," the Army’s Combat Readiness Center said in the report.
HARROWING VIDEO FROM MILITARY BASE SHOWS NEW ANGLE OF MIDAIR CRASH CATASTROPHE
After more than a dozen aviators died in the first half of fiscal year 2023, the Army conducted an aviation-wide stand down in April 2023, temporarily grounding all regular missions and training to assess safety issues.
However, the accidents continued. In April 2024, the Army executed a safety "stand up" with training on new safety protocols and procedures. After the stand up, the class A mishap rate for the remainder of FY 2024 dropped to 0.86 per 100,000 flight hours.
Last week Army secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll promised senators he would emphasize a "culture of safety" after the deadly crash, which he said "seems to be preventable."
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"There are appropriate times to take risk and there are inappropriate times to take risk," he said. "I don’t know the details around this one, but after doing it, if confirmed, and working with this committee to figure out the facts, I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan."
The Black Hawk, carrying three Army pilots, was conducting an "annual proficiency training flight" when it collided with a commercial regional jet from Wichita, Kansas, as it was on the descent to land at Reagan, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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