Unveiling the many factors behind a fatal aircraft crash

On the night of January 29, I watched the news with my husband when a terrible incident was reported: a helicopter and an aircraft had collided near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.

I immediately started to send my sources in aviation. My New York Times colleague Mark Walker, who had dinner in a restaurant, quickly paid for his bill and called sources in the transport world.

The crash, which occurred about 300 feet above the cool Potomac flow at high speed, was unlikely that it had survivors.

Additional details were announced in the following hours. The helicopter was a black falcon of the army, and the plane was a regional jet American airline from Wichita, Kan. Wracks in the Potomac.

Reporting in the days after the crystal of the frightening scope of the catastrophe, in which 67 people, three were killed on the helicopter and 64 on the plane – and insight flashes in the previous events.

Frequent and largely not limited helicopter flights near the airport had done the already overloaded airspace even more, as we had found. At the time of the crash, a single air traffic controller led both helicopters and planes, a scenario that, according to a memo of the Federal Aviation Administration, was “not normal” for the hour and the traffic volume. The Black Hawk had flown higher than for helicopters in the area.