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Plane-helicopter collision in New York that killed 67 people, shocking report emerges: Here's who was to blame
2025-04-28 14:12:17 / BOTA
The pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into an American Airlines passenger plane failed to follow instructions to change course seconds before the fatal incident, a shocking new report has revealed.
On the night of Jan. 29, Army Black Hawk Captain Rebecca Lobach was conducting an annual flight evaluation with her co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, who served as her flight instructor.
Three months later, new details published by The New York Times revealed that the pilot had made more than one mistake, leading to one of the biggest disasters in aviation history.
Not only was Lobach flying the Black Hawk too high, but in the final moments before the crash, she ignored her co-pilot's advice and instructions to change course.
Lobach's piloting skills were being tested during the evaluation that fateful night, before the crew was notified that an aircraft was nearby, according to the report.
Just 15 seconds before the collision with the commercial airliner, air traffic control instructed Lobach and Eaves to turn left, but she did not do so.
Seconds before the crash, co-pilot Eaves approached Lobach in the cockpit and told her that air traffic control wanted her to turn left. She still did not change course.
Investigators may never understand why Lobach didn't change direction that day.
Both Lobach and Eaves had received the message that a plane was nearby and had seen the plane themselves before requesting to continue the flight with “visual separation.”
This is a practice that allows aircraft to avoid collisions based on their own observations, rather than following the instructions of air traffic controllers.
"The request to fly under these rules is routinely approved in airspace supervised by controllers. Most of the time, visual separation is executed without incident."
But when mismanaged, it can create a deadly hazard – a risk that aviation experts have been warning about for years,” experts told the newspaper.
The report stated: “The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from the intersection with the aircraft. Warrant Officer Eaves then called Captain Lobach’s attention. He told her that he believed air traffic control required them to turn left, towards the banks of the East River.”
If she had turned left, “more space would have been created between the helicopter and Flight 5342,” the report added.
Instead, 67 people – all passengers and crew on the plane and helicopter – lost their lives.
Lobach, from Durham, North Carolina, was an aviation officer in the Army and had accumulated about 500 flight hours. She also served as a military aide in the White House during the Biden administration.
A critical rule in the aviation industry is that if two aircraft are on a collision course, pilots must be advised if they are expected to intersect, according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.
Experts found that this did not happen that night and that "immediate intervention was necessary" to prevent the terrible tragedy that left 67 dead.
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