Inside the Helicopter That Caused the Potomac Air Disaster

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One year ago, on January 29, 2025, two Army pilots strapped into a Black Hawk helicopter for a training mission out of Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia and, two hours later, flew it into an airliner that was approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing all 67 aboard both aircraft. It was the deadliest air disaster in the United States in a quarter-century. Normally, in the aftermath of an air crash, government investigators take a year or more to issue a final report laying out the reasons the incident occurred. But in this case, the newly seated U.S. president, Donald Trump, held a press conference the next day and blamed the accident on the FAA’s DEI under the Biden and Obama administrations. “They actually came out with a directive, ‘too white,’” he claimed. “And we want the people that are competent.”

In the months that followed, major media outlets probed several real-world factors that contributed to the tragedy, including staffing shortages at FAA towers, an excess of traffic in the D.C. airspace, and the failure of the Black Hawk to broadcast its location over ADS-B — an automatic reporting system — before the collision. To address this final point, the Senate last month passed the bipartisan ROTOR Act, which would require all aircraft to use ADS-B — “a fitting way to honor the lives of those lost nearly one year ago over the Potomac River,” as bill co-sponsor Ted Cruz put it.

At a public meeting on Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board laid out a list of recommended changes in response to the crash, criticizing the FAA for allowing helicopters to operate dangerously close to passenger planes and for allowing professional standards to slip at the control tower.

What has gone unexamined in the public discussion of the crash, however, is why these particular pilots were on this mission in the first place, whether they were competent to do what they were trying to do, what adverse conditions they were facing, and who was in charge at the moment of impact. Ultimately, while systemic issues may have created conditions that were ripe for a fatal accident, it was human decision-making in the cockpit that was the immediate cause of this particular crash.

This account is based on documents from the National Transportation Board (NTSB) accident inquiry and interviews with aviation experts. It shows that, when we focus on the specific details and facts of a case, the cause can seem quite different from what a big-picture overview might indicate. And this, in turn, suggests different logical steps that should be taken to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

The whine of the Blackhawk’s engine increased in pitch, and the whump-whump of its four rotor blades grew louder, as the matte-black aircraft lifted into the darkened sky above the single mile-long runway at Davison Army Airfield in Fairfax County, Virginia, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

The UH-60, as it’s formally designated, is an 18,000-pound aircraft that entered service in 1979 as a tactical transport aircraft, used primarily for moving troops and equipment. This one belonged to Company B of the 12th Aviation Battalion, whose primary mission is to transport government VIPs, including Defense Department officials, members of Congress, and visiting dignitaries. Tonight’s flight would operate as PAT 25, for “Priority Air Transit.”

Black Hawks are typically flown by two pilots. The pilot in command, or PIC, sits in the right-hand seat. Tonight, that role was filled by 39-year-old chief warrant officer Andrew Eaves. Warrant officers rank between enlisted personnel and commissioned officers; it’s the warrant officers who carry out the lion’s share of a unit’s operational flying. When not flying VIPs, Eaves served as a flight instructor and a check pilot, providing periodic evaluation of the skills of other pilots. A native of Mississippi, he had 968 hours of flight experience and was considered a solid pilot by others in the unit.

Before he took off, Eaves’ commander had discussed the flight with him and admonished him to “not become too fixated on his evaluator role” and to remain “in control of the helicopter,” according to the NTSB investigation.

His mission was to give a check ride to Captain Rebecca Lobach, the pilot sitting in the left-hand seat. Lobach was a staff officer, meaning that her main role in the battalion was managerial. Nevertheless, she was expected to maintain her pilot qualifications and, to do so, had to undergo a number of annual proficiency checks. Tonight’s three-hour flight was intended to get Lobach her annual sign-off for basic flying skills and for the use of night-vision goggles, or NVGs. To accommodate that, the flight was taking off an hour and 20 minutes after sunset.

Both pilots wore AN/AVS-6(V)3 Night Vision Goggles, which look like opera glasses and clip onto the front of a pilot’s helmet. They gather ambient light, whether from the moon or stars or from man-made sources; intensify it; and display it through the lens of each element. The eyepiece doesn’t sit directly on the face but about an inch away, so the pilot can look down under it and see the instrument panel.

Night-vision goggles have a narrow field of view, just 40 degrees compared to the 200-degree range of normal vision, which makes it harder for pilots to maintain full situational awareness. They have to pay attention to obstacles and other aircraft outside the window, and they also have to keep track of what the gauges on the panel in front them are saying: how fast they’re going, for instance, and how high. There’s a lot to process, and time is of the essence when you’re zooming along at 120 mph while lower than the tops of nearby buildings. To help with situational awareness, Eaves and Lobach were accompanied by a crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara, sitting in a seat just behind the cockpit, where he would be able to help keep an eye out for trouble.

The helicopter turned to the south as it climbed, then flew along the eastern shore of the Potomac until the point where the river makes a big bend to the east. Eaves banked to the right and headed west toward the commuter suburb of Vicksburg, where the lights of house porches and street lamps seemed to twinkle as they fell in and out of the cover of the bare tree branches.

PAT 25 followed the serpentine course of the Rapidan River through the hills and farm fields of the Piedmont. At this point, Eaves was not only the pilot in command, but also the pilot flying, meaning that he had his hands on the controls that guide the aircraft’s speed and direction and his feet on the rudder pedals that keep the helicopter “in trim” — that is, lined up with its direction of flight. Lobach played a supporting role, working the radio, keeping an eye out for obstacles and other traffic, and figuring out their location by referencing visible landmarks.

Lobach, 28, had been a pilot for four years. She’d been an ROTC cadet at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which she graduated from in 2019. Both her parents were doctors; she’d dreamed of a medical career but eventually realized that she couldn’t pursue one in the Army. According to her roommate, “She did not have a huge, massive passion” for aviation but chose it because it was the closest she could get to practicing medicine, under the circumstances. “She badly wanted to be a Black Hawk pilot because she wanted to be a medevac unit,” he told NTSB investigators. After she completed flight training at Fort Rucker, she was stationed at Fort Belvoir, where she joined the 12th Aviation Battalion and was put in charge of the oil-and-lubricants unit. One fellow pilot in the unit described her to the NTSB as “incredibly professional, very diligent and very thorough.”

In addition to her official duties, Lobach served as a volunteer social liaison at the White House, where she regularly represented the Army at Medal of Honor ceremonies and state dinners. She was both a fitness fanatic and a baker, known for providing fresh sourdough bread to her unit. She had started dabbling in real-estate investments and looked forward to moving in with her boyfriend of one year, another Army pilot with whom she talked about having “lots and lots of babies.” She was planning to leave the service in 2027 and had already applied for medical school at Mount Sinai. Helicopter flying was not something she intended to pursue.

Though talented as a manager, she wasn’t much of a pilot. Helicopter flying is an extremely demanding feat of coordination and balance, akin to juggling and riding a unicycle at the same time. For Lobach, the difficulty was compounded by the fact that she had trained on highly automated, relatively easy-to-fly helicopters at Fort Rucker and then been assigned to an older aircraft, the Black Hawk L or “Lima” model, at Fort Belvoir. Unlike newer models, which can maintain their altitude on autopilot, the Lima requires constant care and attention, and Lobach struggled to master it. One instructor described her skills as “well below average,” noting that she had “lots of difficulties in the aircraft.” Three years before, she’d failed the night-vision evaluation she was taking tonight.

Before the flight, Eaves had told his girlfriend that he was concerned about Lobach’s capability as a pilot and that, skill-wise, she was “not where she should be.”

It’s not uncommon for pilots to struggle during the early phase of their career. But Lobach’s development had been particularly slow. In her five years in the service, she had accumulated just 454 hours of flight time, and she wasn’t clocking more very quickly. The Army requires officers in her role to fly at least 60 hours a year, but in the past 12 months, she’d flown only 56.7. Her superiors had made an exception for her because in March she’d had knee surgery for a sports injury, preventing her from flying for three months. The waiver made her technically qualified to fly, but it didn’t change the fact that she was rustier than pilots were normally allowed to become.

If she’d been keen on flying, she could have used every moment of this flight to hone her skills by taking the controls herself. But she was content to let Eaves do the flying during the first part of the trip.

Drawing near to Greenhouse Airport, a small, private grass runway near a plant nursery, they navigated via an old-fashioned technique called pilotage, using landmarks and dead reckoning to find their way from point to point. Coming in for their first landing of the night, they were looking for the airstrip’s signature greenhouse complex.

Lobach: That large lit building may be part of it.

Eaves: It does look like a greenhouse, doesn’t it?

Lobach: Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? We can start slowing back.

Eaves: All right, slowing back.

As they circled around the runway, Eaves commented that the lighting of the greenhouse building was so intense that it was blinding in the NVGs, and Lobach agreed. Eaves positioned the helicopter a few hundred feet above the landing zone and asked Lobach to show him where it was. After she did so correctly, he told her to take the controls. This process followed a formalized set of acknowledgements to make sure that both parties understood who was in control of the aircraft.

Eaves: You’ve got the flight controls.

Lobach: I’ve got the controls.

As Lobach eased the helicopter toward the ground, Eaves and Crew Chief O’Hara called out times from the landing checklist.

O’Hara: Clear of obstacles on the left.

Lobach: Thank you. Coming forward.

Eaves: Clear down right.

Lobach: Nice and wide.

Eaves: 50 feet.

Lobach: 30 feet.

They touched down. One minute and 42 seconds after passing control to Lobach, Eaves took it back again. As they sat on the ground with their rotor whirring, they discussed the fuel remaining aboard the aircraft and the direction they would travel in during the next segment of their flight. Finally, after six minutes, Eaves signaled that they were ready to take off again.

Eaves: Whenever you’re ready, ma’am.

Lobach: Okay, let’s do it.

Eaves’s deference to Lobach was symptomatic of what is known among psychologists as an “inverted authority gradient.” Although he was the pilot in command, both responsible for the flight and in a position of authority over others on it, Eaves held a lesser rank than Lobach and so in a broader context was her subordinate. In moments of high stress, this ambiguity can muddy the waters as to who is supposed to be making crucial decisions.

Eaves, Lobach, and O’Hara ran through their checklists, and Eaves eased the Black Hawk up into the night sky.

They headed north, bending to the east to avoid Culpeper Airport to their left. The scattering of lights beneath them was sparse as they passed over the rural foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Cruising at an altitude of 2,000 feet, the aircraft hit rough air.

Lobach: A little turbulent.

Eaves: Little bump.

It was a complaint Lobach continued to make throughout the night. A cold front was moving through the area, bringing winds that gusted up to 45 mph. The wind wasn’t dangerous, but it kept pushing the aircraft off its flight path and caused constant unexpected jerks. It was another stress factor in a night that already had plenty.

Two minutes later, Lobach declared that she was taking control of the aircraft. Eaves sounded surprised.

Eaves: What’s up?

Lobach: I got the flight controls.

Eaves: Yup, you got flight controls.

Lobach: I got flight controls.

Eaves: You do have flight controls. Sorry about that.

Lobach: What’s that?

Eaves: Sorry about that.

Lobach pointed out that they had descended below their intended altitude of 2,000 feet and were now at 1,600 feet. Eaves was confused, then realized that he had misread the altimeter display.

The fact that Eaves would make such a mistake is a reminder that, while he was a much more experienced and proficient pilot than Lobach, he, too, was a pilot with less than a thousand hours of flight time. In order to even start a career as an airline pilot in the U.S., you need a minimum of 1,500 hours.

The 12th Aviation Battalion is an elite unit with a glamorous and high-stakes mission: flying government officials and VIPs around in the nation’s capital. A decade ago, it was staffed by experienced aviators who would build flight time elsewhere before being transferred to the unit. But in recent years, it had begun accepting pilots straight out of flight school. “The unit is strapped for resources,” Lobach’s roommate told the NTSB. “They have struggled with staffing issues in general.”

Similar problems exist throughout Army aviation; the service has been having a hard time retaining its most experienced pilots and providing adequate flight time for those currently coming up through the ranks. Since 2011, the average number of hours flown per year by crewed Army aircraft has fallen from 302 to 198.

Lobach continued to fret about the wind, while Eaves seemed unfazed.

Lobach: Strong headwind right now.

Eaves: What’s up?

Lobach: Uh, pretty strong headwind.

She pointed out that even though the airspeed indicator had the helicopter moving at 110 knots, the GPS was showing their groundspeed as 93 knots, implying a headwind of 17 knots or 20 mph.

Eaves: Oh yeah, it’s kicking.

After Lobach again commented on how choppy the conditions were, Eaves took control back, just a minute and 48 seconds after he had relinquished it. In the first hour of flying time, Lobach had been operating the controls for a total of three and a half minutes.

PAT 25 was skirting the edge of the busy restricted airspace around Dulles and Reagan, a three-dimensional imaginary blob 90 miles across with corridors cut through at low altitudes for helicopter traffic. It’s a complicated and busy environment that encompasses three major airports and three military airbases and is patrolled by military helicopters from three different branches of the military. Some transport VIPs, others hunt and intercept drones and aircraft that shouldn’t be in this highly sensitive space.

To be clear, there was no need for PAT 25 to be messing around in this airspace. All Lobach needed to do on this flight was demonstrate her proficiency with night-vision goggles and her skill at operating the aircraft. They could have done everything in the much quieter region around Greenhouse Airport, and other flight instructors routinely did. “I would go kind of west and south, for the most part,” says Austin Roth, a former instructor pilot in the 12th Aviation Battalion who flew with Eaves and even once gave him a check ride. “That was my preference.”

As they passed over the Civil War battlefield of Thoroughfare Gap, an alarm called a master caution went off, indicating that a control system for a tail fin was malfunctioning. If the situation worsened and the surface became stuck, the helicopter could crash. Lobach immediately started to run an emergency checklist. To their relief, they were able to reset the system without difficulty.

Once everything was sorted out, Eaves took a moment to critique her performance.

Eaves: “So how’s that supposed to look, ma’am?”

Lobach: “That EP [emergency checklist]?

Eaves: “Yup. Any EP.”

Lobach realized that in her haste to resolve the issue, she’d skipped a preliminary step: pulling out a document called the flight reference card (FRC) and reading the action steps from it directly, rather than relying on memory.

Eaves: Yup. So, I mean, that’s the whole point of the FRC cards, right, is to get us away from doing those things automatically … ’cause we end up killing ourselves because we do something without confirming and verifying …

Lobach: Okay, thank you, yeah, you’re absolutely right. I sometimes forget that.

Soon after, Lobach complained of lightheadedness.

Lobach: I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little dizzy, like, looking down and around with the winds or whatever it is, but not too bad.

Eaves: Roger. It is definitely windy. But a beautiful night other than that.

They were now at their maximum distance to the north from their home airfield at Fort Davison. To get back, they could either return the way they came, flying south and then east, or go the other way around Dulles and Reagan by flying east and then south. Doing the latter would necessitate cutting through the busiest part of the whole Washington airspace, using the river routes that thread between Reagan National Airport and the National Mall.

That’s what Eaves chose to do. As they were turning east, Lobach decided that she was ready to fly the helicopter.

Lobach: Would you be up for me flying for a little while?

Eaves: Yup, by all means, ma’am.

Their next landing spot was a helipad located at the Federal Support Center, an underground facility located at a former Nike missile-launch site in Olney, Maryland. As they drew near, Eaves prepped Lobach for their arrival. As usual, they would fly to a pre-chosen waypoint, known as a release point (RP), then decelerate and descend to a touchdown in the landing zone. Now that the wind was at their back, it was pushing them to a higher groundspeed than their airspeed, meaning that they had less time to plan and react as they maneuvered for landing.

Eaves: All right, you’re 1.4 [kilometers] to your RP.

Lobach: Okay. Slow down, come down a bit. Wow, that’s wild! I’m slowing down and still at a hundred knots ground.

Eaves: 0.7 [kilometers]. What’s your RP?

Lobach: What about it?

Eaves: What was it?

Lobach: Um, I’m sorry — what do you mean, “What was it?”

Eaves: All right, what am I looking for on the ground?

Lobach: Um, I can’t remember, I have to look at my notes.

Eaves told her not to worry about her notes, which told her how to visually identify their landing spot, and instead to simply follow her navigational instruments, which had been programmed with the waypoint’s coordinates.

As they descended, Eaves and O’Hara called out items on the pre-landing checklist. Lobach commented that she could feel the strong, gusty wind pushing on the left side of the aircraft. Both she and Eaves were scanning ahead, looking for the helipad amid the trees and buildings below them. Eaves spotted it first, then Lobach. But as she maneuvered to come in for a landing to the north, she lost track of it.

Eaves: Remember, there is a fence on the north side of this pad.

Lobach: Yeah. Thank you … probably still coming in a little too fast. Not so bad. See that big tree on the right? Am I clear of that?

Eaves: You are.

Suddenly, the landing was not looking so good, and Eaves told her to abort.

Eaves: Go around! Go around! Go around!

Lobach added power and climbed away from the terrain. As she did, building airspeed, she put the helicopter into a banked turn.

Eaves: Are you going — which way are you going, ma’am?

Lobach: I was going to go right, sorry, do you want me to go left?

Eaves: I think it would probably be better, because you’re turning into the wind, right?

Lobach: Yeah.

The idea of a go-around is to climb in order to come around and try landing again, but Lobach was starting to feel sketched out.

Lobach: I’m not sure I’m, I’m —

Eaves: What’s up?

Lobach: This doesn’t feel right.

Eaves: Yup. You’re good. Feels like you’re getting your ass kicked with some wind to the left, right?

Lobach: Yes.

Eaves: So go ahead and start your approach.

Lobach: Okay.

Eaves coached her to add power and get the aircraft back in position to try landing again.

Lobach: Yeah, I — I’m not comfortable landing there.

Eaves: All right, cool.

Lobach: I’m clearing out. I probably could, but — it’s handling funny.

Eaves: All right. Mind if I give it a shot?

Lobach: Yeah, please.

Eaves took the controls and landed the helicopter. On the ground, he talked her through how to handle the tricky winds and offered her a chance to try again.

Lobach: Yeah, honestly — I, uh, when we got to the … at that point, that’s probably, like, where I was like, Yeah, I don’t want to do this, ’cause I can’t really see it, like maybe I need to be higher in my chair or something, but I kind of lost any … Yeah, I’m good with the demonstration.

Eaves had no objections, and they decided to head back to base. By failing to complete the maneuver as requested, Lobach had effectively failed the check ride. Once back at their home base, Eaves would have to give her a rating of “unsatisfactory,” and Lobach would be put on training status until she was able to demonstrate the necessary proficiency.

But as they continued their mission, neither mentioned that fact.

Their course south took them across the wealthy Maryland suburbs of Bethesda and Cabin John, passing over golf courses, nature preserves, and tracts of expensive homes as they headed for the Potomac.

Four minutes after takeoff, perhaps to show that she was not intimidated by the aircraft, Lobach again asked to take the controls. She would have them for the rest of the flight.

Pilots who are rusty or lack experience do not have the muscle memory that more skilled pilots possess. When too much information is flooding in at once, they are unable to process it all and become what psychologists call “task saturated.” Among aviators, the condition is known as being “behind the plane.” In this state, pilots are unable to plan ahead to anticipate problems. They respond reactively or simply miss cues altogether. They are not, in other words, fully in control of the aircraft.

Reaching the Potomac again at Cabin John, she was too high — 1,400 feet instead of the max altitude of 1,300 — and turned right instead of left, nearly putting the helicopter into forbidden airspace. Rather than taking control of the aircraft back from her, Eaves gently teased her. She pulled a 180, descending as she entered Route 1, a flight corridor along the Potomac’s northern shore.

You could think of these D.C. helicopter routes as tunnels through the otherwise forbidden airspace. They have a defined ceiling that gets lower and lower as you get closer to the center of the city but no defined lateral boundaries; instead, pilots are instructed to follow the bank of the river. That may seem a little vague, but pilots understand how to do it.

“When I flew those routes, especially at night, I always flew them right on the bank,” says Tim Lilley, a former Army pilot who operated Black Hawks in the D.C. metro area. “One of the reasons is it’s very much easier to tell if you’re gaining or losing altitude, looking at trees and rocks and whatever is on the bank, as opposed to looking at water. If you’re looking at water, there’s no contrast, so you don’t know if you’re climbing or descending unless you look at your instruments. It’s a very bad idea to fly just flat over water at 200 feet, because you’re going to have to spend a lot of time looking inside to make sure you’re at the right altitude. You could very quickly lose 200 feet and end up in the drink.”

As she flew down the river, Lobach was clearly struggling to stay in control of the aircraft. Eaves nudged her to keep the helicopter in trim and to find the correct altitude.

At 8:43, as they passed one of the most sensitive and restricted airspaces in the world — the vice-president’s residence at the Naval Observatory — Lobach again complained about the turbulence.

Lobach: Getting choppy close to the ground.

Eaves: Oh yeah, down low it’s definitely gonna get choppy.

Lobach: Yeah. We’re at 300 [feet altitude].

That was not correct, as Eaves indirectly reminded her.

Eaves: Roger, got you at four.

Lobach descended, but the ceiling of the corridor was decreasing as well, so she needed to come down further still.

Eaves: All right, there’s 300 for 200.

Lobach: Two hundred.

But she was not at 200 feet. As she passed the Lincoln Memorial, she was above 300 feet and, in fact, had begun climbing. She had also let the aircraft get out of trim, so that the helicopter was flying somewhat sideways to the wind. Novice pilots who are fixated on one of the numerous aspects of their flight — altitude, location, speed, communication with air-traffic control — can easily lose track of the trim. But it’s an important part of good airmanship, especially during turns.

South of the Lincoln Memorial, the helicopter route bends east to cross the Tidal Basin and follows a side branch, the Washington Channel, which is occupied by a small marina. Staying on track required a sharp turn to the left.

Eaves: Lots of right pedal, ma’am.

Lobach: Okay.

Eaves: There we go, now we can make the turn.

He noticed that, in the process of getting the helicopter to fly straight, she had lost track of her altitude and gotten too high again.

Eaves: You’re at 300 feet. Come down for me.

Lobach: Yeah. Go down 200.

Lobach stopped climbing and brought the helicopter into a sharp, short descent, but still remained above the route ceiling.

As PAT 25 was working its way southeast along Route 1, a regional jet inbound from Wichita was coming up the river from the south, heading for runway 33 at Reagan. Operated by a subsidiary of American Airlines, PSA Airlines flight 5342 was a Bombardier CRJ700 with four crewmembers and 60 passengers, including a group of teenage figure skaters, coaches, and parents returning from the national figure-skating championships.

PAT 25’s path along the east bank of the Potomac would take it right under the designated flight path for jets landing on runway 33. Technically, if neither the helicopter nor the plane deviated from its assigned route, they would pass each other safely, but the margin was so small — just 75 feet at the point of closest approach — that the air-traffic controller at Reagan’s tower called PAT 25 to alert it.

Reagan Tower: PAT 25, traffic just south of Wilson Bridge is a CRJ at 1,200 feet for runway 33.

The primary job of an air-traffic controller is to keep aircraft from colliding. Given that two aircraft on the controller’s screen were now on a converging course, it was crucial to ensure that their paths did not intersect. A commonly used option was to hold southbound helicopter traffic at Hains Point, where the Washington Channel rejoins the main channel of the Potomac, until the landing plane had passed. Instead, Eaves assured the tower that he could see the incoming flight and asked for permission to stay clear of it under his own cognizance.

Eaves: PAT 25 has the traffic in sight. Request visual separation.

Reagan Tower: Separation approved.

Eaves did not have PSA 5342 in sight. As he looked to the south, the airliner would have appeared as one of a string of bright-white dots strung above the horizon. Some commentators have speculated that Eaves had another aircraft in sight, which he mistakenly believed to be PSA 5342. But it may have been that he didn’t have any aircraft in sight at all. During an interview with NTSB investigators, Army Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten testified that it was common practice for pilots in the 12th Aviation Battalion to say that they had the traffic in sight even when they didn’t, so that the tower would give them the visual separation clearance. “I’ve done that,” Van Vechten said. “I know if I don’t say it, I may have to hold.”

As they approached Hains Point, Eaves noted that the wind was pushing them, from behind and from the side, toward the eastern bank. To stay on course, Lobach would have to counteract that push by angling the helicopter to the right.

Lobach: Crabbing … better not to fight the wind. Right pedal.

Fifty seconds later, PAT 25 rejoined the main channel of the Potomac at Hains Point. The lights of Reagan Airport lay a half mile to the right. The PSA flight was a mile and a half away, dead ahead, on a converging course, and closing at a speed of more than 200 mph.

In the aftermath of the crash, investigators focused on the staffing level at the Reagan tower, concerned that an overburdened controller had mistakenly allowed the aircraft to converge, but the transcript shows that the close approach of the jet and the helicopter was front-of-mind for him. As the distance between the aircraft closed, he checked in with the Black Hawk.

Reagan Tower: PAT 25, you have the CRJ in sight? PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.

Eaves: PAT 25 has aircraft in sight. Request visual separation.

Reagan Tower: Visual separation.

Flying south from Hains Point, Lobach should have eased to the left to join the bank of the Potomac. Instead, she headed straight down the center of the river. Out here over the water, the river was just a black void. The only way to gauge how high she was was to look at the altimeter inside the cockpit. But that meant not looking outside at what was in front of her.

Likely, she was still task saturated: trying to keep the helicopter at the right altitude, and along the right path, while wrestling with turbulence and a gusty wind that was pushing her toward the river bank on her left, all while wearing night-vision goggles that blocked her peripheral vision and overwhelmed her eyes with too much light. In this environment, with all the lights of the city around her, it would actually have been much easier to see with the goggles off, but that would have defeated the purpose of the mission.

In a word, Lobach was flailing. Eaves was as well, too distracted by his runaway student pilot to pay attention to what was happening outside the cockpit.

Eaves: All right, kinda come left for me, ma’am. I think that’s why he’s asking.

Lobach: Sure.

Eaves: We’re kinda —

Lobach: Okay, fine.

Eaves: — out in the middle.

Lobach did not turn toward the eastern bank.

At 8:47:57.7, the helicopter’s black box recorded Lobach making a “sound similar to mumbling.”

The Blackhawk helicopter was flying at an altitude of 278 feet and a speed of 120 mph. It was both too far out from the riverbank and too high, which put it squarely in the path of the CRJ descending at 128 mph.

One second before impact, the CRJ’s flight crew tried to pull the airplane up. The helicopter’s main rotor hit the nose and engines of the airliner, triggering a fireball, and the commingled wreckage fell vertically into the Potomac River. The impact would have been unsurvivable for anyone onboard.

What Lobach faced on the final night of her life was a mission that was far beyond her skill level. She was a low-proficiency pilot with a low aptitude for flying, one who didn’t fly regularly in an operational role and had no intention of flying after leaving the service. She was operating a helicopter that was older, less automated, and more challenging than what she’d trained on. Her instructor pilot had been warned to keep a tight rein on her during the flight but had failed to do so.

As the pilot in command, Eaves bears personal responsibility for what happened. But responsibility was not his alone. The crash was also a product of a dysfunctional system. For years, the Army air-accident rate has been climbing, as aviators complain that they are not being given enough flight time to maintain adequate levels of skill.

“Across a lot of Army aviation units … what we’re seeing is that composite cockpit time is steadily going down and down and down,” said NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy during a hearing into the accident. “Five years ago, we would have thousands of hours cockpit. Now, we have hundreds and hundreds of hours cockpit … Experience across aviation formations is steadily decreasing.”

It’s striking that this decrease is even being felt at the 12th Aviation Battalion, whose mission is to transport the legislators who make Defense spending decisions and the Pentagon brass who implement those decisions. You’d think that they’d want their lives entrusted to only the most skilled pilots. The fate of PAT 25 shows that the unit can’t even be trusted to transport itself. “At her flight time of 460-something hours, if you’re not flying once a week, you are not proficient,” says Tim Lilley, the former Army Black Hawk pilot. “Certainly not proficient enough to fly high-ranking officials.” Yet the Army considered Lobach qualified to do just that.

After Lilley retired from the military, he became an airline pilot, and eventually his son Samuel became an airline pilot, too. Samuel Lilley was serving as the first officer of PSA 5342 on the night of January 29, 2025. In the year since his death Tim has been on a mission to change the Army’s approach so that tragedies like this don’t happen again.

“It was an embarrassment to Army aviation,” he says. “And you know, I still proudly wear my Army wings. But there’s a lot of things that have to be addressed.”

One thing he’d like to see happen is for the Army to establish a rigorous safety-reporting system of the kind that’s standard in commercial aviation. Another is to make sure that pilots get enough flying time to be proficient, even if that means taking staff officers off the roster entirely. “They have 14,000 active pilots. And I said to the Army Chief of Staff, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have 11,000 proficient pilots, rather than 14,000 pilots that are barely getting minimums?’”

He knows that it will be a hard journey to get there. Cultures don’t change easily. But a son’s death is a powerful motivator. As for Eaves and Lobach, he doesn’t blame them for his son’s death. He thinks that Lobach could have become a good pilot if they gave her another thousand hours of flying time. Instead, the Army withheld from her the training and flight time that she needed to fly safely and then required her to go fly anyway on a mission that was as ill-conceived as it was poorly executed.

“There was no reason for them to be there,” he says. “This was a bad idea. A bad plan from the get-go.”