Tragedy Over DC: One On One with Austin Roth | Episode 4

On the evening of January 29, 2025, a catastrophic accident occurred over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided in mid-air, tragically killing 67 people. Retired Black Hawk instructor pilot Austin Roth knows the aircraft, the flight paths and much of the crew. He shares his expert opinion on what most likely happened and what’s been misunderstood about the tragedy.

This episode is sponsored by CHOQ. Use the name LARA for a 17.76% discount on your CHOQ subscription for life (cancel anytime) www.CHOQ.com/#LARA

Episode Transcript

Austin (00:00):
Blackhawk crew members don't really have
the critical piece of information to
understand that oh, there's an airplane
that's not just gonna come straight in here
and we're gonna go to the left of them and
never cross paths Down runway one, down
runway one, and then it's gonna take a hard
turn to go into runway three, three and cut
right in front of them.
And they never heard that critical piece of
information.

Lara (00:31):
Hello and welcome to another episode of
Going Rogue with Laura Logan.
So there was a lot of interest in the crash
that happened at DCA Airport between a US
Army helicopter Black Hawk helicopter and a
civilian aircraft from American Airlines.
But there are still a lot of questions
about what happened and whenever there's

(00:53):
something like this goes on, people have a
lot to say about it, especially in the age
of social media where anyone can say
anything they want, anytime they want any
time.
But most people don't know anything close
to as much as my guest today, who was
driven to speak about this because he

(01:14):
actually knew the instructor pilot aboard
that aircraft extremely well.
He was part of that unit, that was his unit.
He was based there for many years and he
also knew of the crew chief.
He knew the crew chief in passing and he
also knew the crew chief and the pilot by
reputation.
So we wanted to hear what he was upset

(01:38):
about, what was frustrating for him about
the coverage, and try to understand more
about what could have happened there.
So I would like to introduce you to Austin
Roth.
Austin, welcome.
Thank you for making the journey out here
to our little corner of flyover country in
the great state of Texas.
Yeah, on the compound.

(01:59):
On the compound.
Okay, we got honey here.
We've got everything in place.
We have the dogs behind the chair, okay, so
got, we got honey here.
We got, we've got everything in place.
We have, we have the dogs behind the chair.
Okay, so we're good to go.
Um, austin, tell me, just for for people to
understand, uh, why anything you have to
say about this um is really relevant, they

(02:26):
got to first understand who you are and um
and so.
So I know that you were in the army for 20
years.
I know you were a Black Hawk pilot for 20
years.
You were stationed at Fort Belvoir,
virginia, which is where that team was
stationed, right?
So tell me about the unit and tell me about
your role.

Austin (02:39):
So yeah, quick background on myself.
I spent eight years in the infantry.
After that I switched over to becoming a
warrant officer pilot, so I put an
application in for that, went to flight
school, spent the next 12 years as a
Blackhawk pilot Shortly after my first duty
station, went back to be an instructor, so
I was an instructor.
After that I became a standardization

(03:00):
instructor pilot, which is like an
instructor pilot for instructor pilots.

Lara (03:03):
So that's as you're going.
You're basically going up and up and up.

Austin (03:06):
You're pretty good pilot yeah well, I don't
know about that, I'll leave that for other
people to say.
But I'm a pretty.

Lara (03:10):
Uh, I've got all the qualifications, uh, so
I'm not everybody, I'm well qualified on,
but when you were like when you train the
trainers no, not.
Not everybody becomes a standard instructor
right, I mean that's, and there's different,
there's different levels of pilots, which
is something I didn't really understand.
But you're an instrument evaluator, right,
which is one kind of instructor, and then
also explain the other two levels.

Austin (03:33):
Yeah.
So you've got an instructor pilot which
would be instructing kind of everybody at
the unit for their.
You'd be doing everything from evaluations
to initial qualifications on new.
You know, if you're going to do, for
instance, firefighting, the instructor
pilots would usually train that.
So if you're going to do unit-specific
stuff, they would be the trainers for that
primarily.
They're also the trainers of the new guys

(03:54):
when they get there from flight school, so
we call it progression, so they kind of get
them spooled up on that individual unit's
SOPs and techniques and all of that stuff
Standard operating procedures, Standard
operating procedures.
So instructor pilots are responsible for
that Standardization.
Instructor pilots are kind of over the
instructor pilots but then also operate as
an instructor pilot.

Lara (04:12):
Well, and you also flew in Iraq and
Afghanistan in combat.

Austin (04:17):
So I was in Iraq as an infantryman but I
flew in Afghanistan in combat as a medevac
pilot and what was that like?
Number one, it was really rewarding,
especially as a former infantry guy, having
seen it kind of from the other side.
Yeah, being on the ground, being on the
ground, yeah, and having needed medevac
before, not for myself but for friends, and

(04:38):
so then to be on the other side of it as
somebody providing that service, providing
that assistance to the people on the ground,
especially because you have kind of a good
understanding of what they need and when
they need it and what you're going to do
how it's going to affect them potentially.
You know, if I land in this direction, if I
land in that direction, if I wait five
minutes, would that maybe be better, would
it maybe be worse?

(04:58):
And with that background you can kind of
develop that picture a little bit better, I
think, than some pilots.
And so I found it really rewarding.
And then also I thought I think I was
pretty good at it and certainly found it
challenging and yeah, that's.

Lara (05:13):
I wonder if we were in Afghanistan at the
same time.

Austin (05:15):
We definitely could have been.
I was there 12 and 13.

Lara (05:19):
Yeah, I mean I came in and out in that time
and I always remember what it was like
being in combat.
You know when someone is shot or you've
been blown up.
Waiting for that, there's nothing quite
like seeing that medevac bird in the sky.

Austin (05:35):
Yeah, it's definitely like I said, having
seen it from the ground before.
Oh my, when you need it, you need it.

Lara (05:41):
Yeah.

Austin (05:41):
Five minutes ago or yesterday.

Lara (05:43):
Yeah, I mean, it's literally life and death
at the in that moment.
So those guys are like gods to you when
you're on the ground.
I mean they are right.

Austin (05:51):
But then you get in the unit and it's just
normal guys, yeah, and it's just, and
you're doing it and your friends are doing
it, and it just becomes kind of normalized
yeah, well, and so for you.

Lara (06:01):
I mean, who were you with when you were?

Austin (06:04):
deployed.
I was with the 101st Airborne Division, so
I was with the 50th Medical Company, which
became Charlie Company 7101.
So 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation.

Lara (06:15):
Okay, and then.
But then you went to the 12th Aviation
Battalion.

Austin (06:19):
Yeah, so I had a couple of different things
I did in between.
Then I went down as an instructor to Fort
Rucker, I did a tour in Egypt and then from
Egypt I went to Fort Belvoir.
So my first standardization instructor
pilot tour was in Egypt and then after that
I went to Fort Belvoir in the same kind of
capacity.

Lara (06:34):
Okay, so Fort Belvoir, virginia, 12th
Aviation Battalion, is where the crew that
was aboard the Black Hawk the day of the
crash right, that's where they were from.
So tell me what that unit is like and what
it's like there.

Austin (06:47):
So it's very unique.
It's set up in the way that kind of all the
other helicopter battalions are set up, or
specifically the Black Hawk battalions are
set up in terms of manning and aircraft and
all that.
What's unique about it is its mission.
So there's other VIP Blackhawk units
throughout the Army, but at Fort Belvoir

(07:08):
you've got an entire battalion, actually an
entire brigade that's kind of dedicated to
that mission.
And then, as Pete Hegg said, the Secretary
of Defense has said the continuity of
government mission is another part of what
they do.

Lara (07:18):
Continuity of government.

Austin (07:19):
Yeah, meaning if missiles are in the air or
if anything bad is happening and certain
people in the government have to go to
other places, then that would be the
continuity of government mission.

Lara (07:30):
So it's not just because continuity of
government often comes up when you think of
it in terms of changing from one
administration to the next, but actually it
means all the time.

Austin (07:41):
Yeah, in this context it means all the time,
24 hours a day.

Lara (07:45):
And this was apparently a continuity of the
time.
24 hours a day, yeah.

Austin (07:50):
And this was apparently a continuity of
government mission.
Is that correct?

Lara (07:54):
This particular one was not.
It was an evaluation, so it would have been
it was a training flight.

Austin (07:56):
Yeah, and it's a little bit of again kind
of getting into this the reason why it's so
hard to understand, because there's a lot
of terms that are used interchangeably
different services can use them differently,
and so one of those is it was a training
flight.
So basically, on one piece of paper you
might have where it says it's a training
flight, and that would be correct, but it
was also an evaluation, so it's an
evaluation flight as well.
And specifically, this would have been the

(08:17):
standardization night vision goggle
evaluation.
So there's three different evaluations you
have to do.
That's two of them.
The other one would be the instrument
evaluation, so an instrument flight
evaluation, which is basically the night
vision goggle.

Lara (08:28):
one would be what?
Basically making sure that you are equipped
to and experienced to train to fly that
aircraft wearing night vision goggles.
That's right.

Austin (08:37):
So every year every pilot in the army is
going to go through kind of an annual
proficiency check and that's going to be
part of that evaluation, the night vision
and standardization evaluations.
Those are usually done concurrently because
if you do it in the most challenging mode
of flight, which is at night, then you can
count those.

(08:58):
For instance, if you do like an auto
rotation where the helicopter is going down
as if it doesn't have engine power, or if
you're doing a roll-on landing where we
bring it in, we actually roll onto the
runway Anytime you're doing those things,
if you do it at night, because that's more
challenging, it counts for a day iteration
of it.
So you can do basically two evaluations for

(09:18):
the price of one, and so that's what they
were doing.

Lara (09:22):
And why specifically with night vision?
I mean I've worn night vision before.
I've looked through them many times on the
battlefield.
Yeah, I hate them.
I mean, I understand the advantage they
give you in combat, but they're not easy to
wear.

Austin (09:35):
Yeah, so everything.
It's really easy to think like, oh, I can't
see, I put night vision on, I can see Must
be better.
Right must be better, but, as you were kind
of describing, it's like I actually hate
worrying.
There's some limitations to them.
Like any system, it's got limitations, and
so what you're really evaluating is how do
they operate when they've got some of those
limitations?
One of the limitations that night vision
gives you is that you can only see 40
degrees Right.

(09:55):
So normal human eyesight you can see about
160 degrees give or take.
So it's that peripheral vision that you
lose, so you lose almost all of your
peripheral vision and then you've got night
vision on your face and you can see.
We always describe it as if you look
through a toilet paper roll.
That's about the same kind of field of view
as you would have.

Lara (10:13):
But then everything's greeny Grainy, sorry,
greeny Greeny is a combination of grainy
and greeny.

Austin (10:18):
Yeah, that's actually, it's an official
term.
I I'm going to submit that to the Army see
if they can get that.

Lara (10:23):
Into the training manuals.

Austin (10:24):
Yeah, and actually in this case it might
have not been greeny yeah, because they
were likely using white phosphor, which
means that it was white night vision, which
has its own benefits and its own
limitations.

Lara (10:35):
Okay, so with white, does it impact how you
see light?

Austin (10:41):
It does, and there's arguments about why
you would use different colors and what the
kind of cost benefit is.
Probably the biggest reason to use white
phosphor is it is easier to see in really
dark environments, and so if I was going
back to Afghanistan, for instance, I would
want white phosphor on, because you've been
there before.

Lara (10:58):
It is dark, dark in some places in
Afghanistan it's an electricity in as much
of the country, as there is in the US, but
that doesn't really apply at DCA.

Austin (11:07):
It doesn't, but you have to keep in mind
that this is still Army equipment and so
that's part of the Army procurement process.
So if the Army in total is going to white
phosphor, night vision goggles, then you're
just going to end up with a white phosphor
night vision at some point.

Lara (11:20):
Yeah, it's not going to be your choice.

Austin (11:21):
That's right.
Yeah, it's not going to be your choice,
that's right.
Yeah, it's not going to be your choice.
It's not going to be the unit's choice
necessarily.
You just get what they get because the Army
is moving to that as their one type of
night vision.

Lara (11:31):
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So you know, the NTSB is very cautious,
probably as they should be, and they said
that there's no, this was a night vision
goggle training flight.

(12:54):
But they're not confirming that the crew
was actually wearing night vision at the
time.

Austin (12:59):
So I think they've done an update.
Well, number one they actually said, hey,
there's three types of evaluations.
They actually said it incorrectly.
I think that they said one was the annual.
They're all annual evaluations, but then
they omitted either night vision or stands
I can't remember standardization.
They omitted one of those.
I'm sure they'll figure that out and then
the final report will be correct.
Um, but I think later on they did do an

(13:21):
update to that when they released it
initially.
Um, and I kind of knew the whole time hey,
what they need to be looking for is when we
put the night vision on, we use the term
aided and unaided, aided being when you've
got your night vision on.
And so, because they do have access to the
cockpit audio, they were saying that
there's nothing that they've been able to
kind of forensically go through and see
whether or not they had them on for sure,

(13:41):
just because of how violent the crash was.
But I knew kind of the whole time.
Hey, what they're going to hear is they're
going to hear aided.
They're right front's aided, meaning the
pilot on the right front of the aircraft,
left front's aided, right rear's aided.
That would mean them putting their night
vision on.
And then if you don't hear them say unaided,
then you have to assume that they'd still

(14:02):
be on, because from a training standpoint,
that's what you'd expect people to do, and
I think what they've come out and said is
that they heard them say aided on the tape,
meaning they put the night vision on, but
they never heard them say unaided so their
working assumption is that they had night
vision on yeah, that would be my assumption
as well okay, so there were the crew on the
Black Hawk.

Lara (14:21):
There were three people.
Let's go through them because you know them.
Just explain, if you will like, how well
you know them and sort of what that means
to you.

Austin (14:33):
Yeah, so Andrew Eaves, the pilot command
and instructor pilot of the aircraft, knew
him extremely well, so I was there from
2020 until 2023.
He got there just a few months before I did.
As a matter of fact, the guy that replaced
me in Egypt Did Andrew's initial
qualification.
So when he first got to the unit he did his

(14:53):
initial training.
We were trading pictures the other day
Because he had a picture from when Andrew
completed his initial training
qualification at the at the unit and then
he replaced me and then I went there.
So I was only a few months behind Andrew
from when he got to the unit, um, and then
he replaced me and then I went there.
So I was only a few months behind Andrew
from when he got to the unit and then he
left a few months before.
I did three years as kind of a normal
rotation at army bases, um, and so three
years later he left, which was just before

(15:16):
I retired Um, but we were together and
COVID in that in that unit we had to spend
kind of more time isolated together because
of the nature of the VIP mission, all this
other stuff, so you'd kind of be stuck in a
room with just your crew, a lot, and so we
spent a lot of time locked in a room
together with just me and him and a crew
chief, and then, you know, also going out
and doing training, doing different

(15:39):
evaluations, doing different missions.
Probably the most high profile mission that
that unit has flown certainly was high
profile and that I flew he was my co-pilot
for and I was the air mission commander for
that with a flight of four Blackhawks and
the secretary of defense, and so he was
hugely trusted in the unit, even as a
co-pilot, and then later on became a pilot
in command.
I did part of his pilot command evaluation.

Lara (16:02):
So when you evaluated him, how did he do?
He did great.

Austin (16:06):
Yeah, I was kind of well known for,
actually, one of my former crew chiefs from
Egypt.
I hope he sees this because he'll get a
kick out of it.
He started I have an alter ego when I'm
doing pilot command evaluations and he
started calling me Dallas Wrath.

Lara (16:21):
Why?
Because you're so harsh so instead of
Austin.

Austin (16:23):
Dallas instead of Roth, wrath, why?
Because you're so harsh.
So instead of Austin.

Lara (16:25):
Dallas yeah.

Austin (16:26):
Instead of Roth Wrath, because on annual
evaluations I was I was going to be very
straightforward.
On pilot command evaluations, you were
going to get put through the ringer.
You were ruthless, I was ruthless, and so
on pilot command evaluations, dallas Wrath
came out and I was going to find it because

(16:46):
part of it is you want to find where the,
you want to find where the chinks in the
armor are Sure, right, and so if you don't
really put them through the ringer, um,
you're not going to see those necessarily,
and it could be something where they get it
wrong this time.
It's not something that, um, they
necessarily have to.
There's probably something they've never
seen before, but now they've got the
necessary kind of knowledge and they can go.
Oh yeah, I do remember I've seen this
before and it's not something that anybody

(17:08):
else has ever done to them, and you can
find that out in evaluation.
And now they've got the experience that
they need to get it right sometime later on
down the line.

Lara (17:15):
Sure, You're not supposed to be Miss
Congeniality.

Austin (17:22):
Yeah, so for me, pilot command evaluations
again an annual evaluation, a little bit
different person Pilot command evaluations
it was going to get pretty exciting for the
person being evaluated.
What would you do Everything from?
Because for the Army it really starts with
the mission planning process, with the
briefing process, and so they're even going

(17:43):
through and doing briefings.
And if they did not have every T-cross,
every I-dotted, everything kind of perfect,
they were going to get torn up and it would
have to be pretty close to perfect.

Lara (17:54):
For me, to kind of let them through it.
So how did Andrew do?

Austin (17:56):
Andrew did great.
Yeah, I was actually reviewing some texts
that we had from where he was, you know I
was sending him what route I wanted him to
fly, where I wanted him to go, what times I
wanted certain things to happen, and he's
asking all the right questions and, yeah,
in terms of how he did, honestly maybe the
best of pilot command evaluations I've
given, if not right up at the very top.

Lara (18:17):
And not because he was your friend.

Austin (18:20):
No no.
So, no, we were friends in a sense, but at
the end of the day, I've still,
positionally, was in a place where we were
friends, but we weren't that good of
friends, you know, when it comes to stuff
like that.
I was responsible for making sure that
Chris operated safely and efficiently and
all of that and that far surpassed any you
know kind of friendliness.

(18:41):
Or being friends that we had who's a better
pilot Me or Andrew, yeah, friendliness.
Or being friends that we had who's a better
pilot Me or Andrew?
Yeah, man Well, I'll put this out.
If I had to have, if when I was a co-pilot
because I have to compare myself to him
when he was a co-pilot or when he was a
pilot in command I would pick Andrew, just
again like reviewing some of those texts,

(19:01):
and he's like, hey, can I pick this up?
I know you guys are on duty Days where he
wasn't on duty.
Hey, I saw you're on duty.
You want me to go pick your guys gear up,
your crews gear up.
This guy would bake birthday cakes for
people that were having birthdays.
He would, and that's just not.
That's not directly pilot related, but just
in terms of kind of how far above and
beyond Committed he was yeah, that's a
great word for it how committed he was to

(19:23):
the organization, to the unit, to his job.
The other thing was he was far better at
one thing in particular, not that I was bad
at it.
So standardization instructor pilots and
instructor pilots we're a little bit like a
human light that comes on when there's
cockroaches out, because people know that
when we're around, the other pilots know

(19:43):
that we're gonna ask them questions or we
might hear them talking about something,
and then all of a sudden our ears perk and
we're like hold on a second.
That's not right.

Lara (19:49):
Yeah.

Austin (19:50):
And nobody wants to kind of be picked on,
so to speak.
I didn't think it was picking on them, but
people feel that way sometimes, and so what
happens is you walk into a room and a lot
of times the new pilots or newer pilots
will scatter and disappear, and so I tried
to avoid doing that myself.
I spent a lot of time in the we call it the
stands shop, but where the instructor

(20:11):
pilots and the standardization pilots are.
You know, I wanted to.
You know I wanted to be their friends
because I wanted to know what they knew.
And you give more information.
You mentor people more if they're your
friends.
More information, you mentor people more if
they're your friends.
So I wanted to do that.
But I think Andrew is even better at it.
If I walked out into the planning kind of
room that we had there, there would be
certain people that might kind of disappear.

(20:32):
He was not going to be one of them and he
would definitely be one of the people that
was in stands with the instructor pilots
asking us questions.
Again, just reviewing those texts, I was
like I would have never asked, like, hey,
you want to pick up your gear?
And again, he was just doing it to pitch in,
so I'd probably pick him over me.
You know when we're at the same kind of
point in our careers.

Lara (20:50):
Yes, yes, I see what you mean.
It makes you feel sad because he was,
obviously was just a great guy.
Yeah, he was, so that's.
Then it must be hard to see people judging
him without really knowing or understanding
what happened.

Austin (21:12):
Yeah, so it was really hard, I think.
Initially, I think most pilots are willing
to kind of withhold judgment.
The digital age has changed that a little
bit because everybody's opinion can be so
kind of amplified and they are so easy to
put your opinion out there.
But crashes that I'd seen in the past.
This wasn't really as much of a problem and

(21:33):
then I was perfectly willing to just kind
of sit back and like, let's let the
investigation play out, let's just kind of
let the information get out through the
normal channels, because it can be really
complicated about how these things happen.
And then I started seeing online comments.
You know, like these incompetent army

(21:54):
pilots went out there and killed a bunch of
people, or it's obvious what happened.
You know they were off on altitude and
that's how everybody got killed.
They should have been at their altitude and
they weren't off on their altitude.
They were off on altitude and that's how
everybody got killed.
They should have been at their altitude,
they weren't off on their altitude.
Um or um, even outside of the online stuff,
I think, um, there were two specific
instances.
Unfortunately, president Trump said
something which, um, focusing on the DEI

(22:17):
aspect of it, um, and I think it's like a
lot of things president Trump says, um,
like a lot of things President Trump says
saying this as a Trump supporter where if
you peel it down, you can go.
Okay, there's a kernel of truth to that.
But as soon as you say something, you kind
of draw attention to it and not knowing the
specifics of it.

(22:37):
In this specific instance, I don't think
that applies.
Looking back at Rebecca Lobach, talking to
friends of her, I know her commander very
well.
I know people that have trained her very
well and she was the pilot she was the
pilot being evaluated and then there was
also a lot of comments about her
specifically, a lot of, just frankly kind
of crazy conspiracy type stuff.

(22:58):
Yeah, because she was a woman, because
she'd been a, a White House social aid
things like that, and there was a lot of
misinformation even about what that job is
and about what she was doing, kind of in
that capacity, and so it kind of put this
spotlight on her.
That I didn't think was fair and it was
causing real damage to people that I knew

(23:18):
in the unit, that knew her, that knew it
wasn't fair but couldn't speak out because
they're still in the military and I'm
retired and I don't know her family.
I've never, never met her family, but I can
put you know, I was thinking about what,
how my family would have felt if I were in
her situation or vice versa, and at some
point I just couldn't do nothing anymore to

(23:40):
see friends and you know people that I
could, I could relate to their position
pretty well just kind of being drug through
the mud in a way that I thought was unfair.

Lara (23:50):
Well, I mean, yeah, you just lost a family
member, right?
Somebody that you love and respect.
I mean, even if they made a mistake, you
want the reporting on that to be honest and
to be right.
I mean, maybe she didn't make a mistake,
but when people jump to conclusions without

(24:12):
really knowing anything, that can be brutal.

Austin (24:15):
Well, and every bit of information has kind
of come out subsequently, which,
unfortunately what happens is when it first
comes out.
Everything is in the media.
Everybody's paying a lot of attention to it.
They're kind of laser focused on it.

Lara (24:27):
Yeah, that's.
You know when that light happens and the
news cycle is consumed with that event.

Austin (24:32):
And they're forming their opinions at that
point?

Lara (24:34):
Yes, Because that's when most people are
hearing about it and talking about it, and
thinking about it.

Austin (24:39):
That's right and then over time the
interest starts to wane Absolutely.
You know, unless you're directly related to
the situation, then the interest kind of
goes down.
But your opinion?
Was formed here when you didn't have as
much information.
And now the information is coming out, but
your interest is dropping off.

Lara (24:54):
Yeah, it reminds me of when they came out
right after the Orlando nightclub shooting,
which was that gay nightclub that was shot
up and they dragged a guy out and put him
on television and said he was the gay lover
of the shooter, and all this stuff.
And, of course, a few weeks later, when the
FBI said, no, this guy never even met the
shooter, had nothing to do with him, never
communicated him.
None of that is true.
In fact, it wasn't even an attack that was

(25:16):
motivated by what they said.
It was a terrorist attack.

Austin (25:21):
Yeah, but unfortunately those opinions are
there and if you talk to some people 10
years after that incident they would still
have that same opinion Like oh yeah, I
thought there was this one thing.
You're like no, it was debunked like a week
later, but their opinion was already formed.

Lara (25:32):
Sure, and in fact there are political
operatives and political figures who know
precisely how to take advantage of that
attention cycle.

Austin (25:42):
Yeah, and I don't think that you know, pete
Hegseth has come out and said, talking
about the altitude, there were a lot of
other factors that if the altitude was off,
which the NTSB is not even willing to say
at this point, we can go into kind of why
that is, you know, but had come out and
said that and it's like again, it focuses

(26:03):
now on the altitude.
On the altitude yeah, as opposed to all of
the factors that led up to the last four or
five minutes of that crash.

Lara (26:09):
Yeah.

Austin (26:09):
Because that's when you really have to
start looking is how did we get to that
point?
It started four or five minutes before that,
or even started back in the risk assessment
process, or a number of other things that
you could talk about that led up to that
particular.
So is that a factor?
It certainly could be, but again, it just
focused everybody's attention on that and
so it became.
What I've been trying to tell people is
it's good to have a simple understanding of

(26:31):
something, but you don't want to be
simplistic, and so if you have a simplistic
understanding of something, it's kind of an
oversimplified version of it, and to go
laser focused on one particular thing, in
this case the altitude especially as early
on, without really knowing.

Lara (26:46):
Without really knowing so okay, wait, let's
get into the altitude and the crash and the
specifics of that in a minute, but what I
just want to finish out first is everyone
who was on that helicopter that day.
So there was Andrew Eves who was the
instructor of doing the evaluation, and
then you had Rebecca who was the pilot and
then the crew chief, right?

(27:07):
So how, Ryan?

Austin (27:09):
Ryan O'Hara.

Lara (27:10):
Yeah, and you knew Ryan in passing.

Austin (27:13):
Yeah, I knew him in passing.
We were briefly in the same company.
I was kind of on my way towards retirement
so I was spending less time there, and then
he went to another company.
After that he's what's known as a
standardization instructor, which is why
there was also some initial misreporting
about him being a pilot as well, because
I'm a standardization instructor pilot,
he's a standardization instructor, and so I
think it'd be really easy to kind of

(27:33):
misunderstand what those are and that
they're not actually related.
And so what he was is that they're in kind
of the crew chief infrastructure.
You have a crew chief and then you have a
flight instructor which is a instructor for
crew chiefs, and then above that you have a
standardization instructor, which is the
same position as a standardization
instructor pilot, just for crew chiefs, and

(27:54):
so he was a standardization instructor.
So he is a very experienced, very
professional, you know, heavily relied upon
crew chief.
You know, like I said, essentially
commiserate with what the senior station
instructor pilots do.

Lara (28:07):
And you said specifically that you knew
Ryan and Rebecca by reputation.
So what was their reputation, stellar?

Austin (28:16):
Yeah, again, that's another part.
Since I didn't really know them myself, I
could kind of see what was going on in
terms of you know we're still active in
chat groups and friends with those guys and
immediately we're all talking and everybody
that I've talked to has has given very high,
has very high regard for both of them.
I really with Ryan, I knew him more because

(28:40):
the other crew chiefs would talk about him
a lot and so I knew him in passing, but
then I always, whenever kind of a question
would come up, it would be like ah man, I
don't know.
Hey, what do you think?
I don't really know.
And this is among the flight instructors,
you know they kind of hang out in our
standardization instructor.
They kind of hang out with the instructor,
pilots, and so, hey, I don't really know, I
don was through events like that.

Lara (29:01):
Yeah, which is obvious that you know.
People respected him then and relied upon
him because he was good.

Austin (29:08):
Yeah, he was very good, had a great
reputation, rebecca Becca Lobach so Becca
was.
I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk
as highly about somebody just as a person
and as an officer so not warrant officer
but officer um, as much as I've seen people

(29:31):
talk about Becca Lubach just in terms of
how much she cared about her job One kind
of anecdotally um, another standardization
instructor was telling me um, that they
were around her and they were, they were
talking and um, this happened several times
and they would just be talking about
general aviation stuff, about Blackhawk
stuff, and she'd be around.
This is pretty common, like I was
explaining with Andrew, where it's like the
instructor pilots are kind of in the room

(29:52):
and you're trying to learn from them, and
she would actually go hold on a second and
she would run and run back and she'd come
back with a notebook and she'd be like okay,
look, start talking again and would write
down everything that they were saying so
she could review it later.
I don't think I've ever said anything that

(30:13):
made somebody want to write it down that
much and I definitely don't remember ever
having somebody do that enough that I took
note of it.
I'm not saying that it never happened Like
I should probably write that down, but I
can't ever remember it happening frequently
enough where it's like she's known for
writing down everything you say because she
wants to be able to retain it and she wants
to learn it and, like, really be a master
of her craft.
Um, I also know she was relied upon the
battalion they'd gone through some

(30:34):
inspections and they had an inspection
coming up and she was heavily relied upon
to kind of get the unit in this one
particular way ready for that inspection.
Because they knew she was really good at
kind of reading the regulations and it
wasn't something that they had a lot of
kind of institutional knowledge to draw on.
So they needed somebody that could just
read and understand and adapt quickly and
so she was brought in specifically to do

(30:54):
this one kind of job prior to this unit
inspection.
So I know her commander very well talked to
him, she was very well liked, thought well
of as a pilot and, yeah, loved baking
apparently.
I heard she'd bring cookies all the time.

Lara (31:13):
Well, so okay, you know the unit, you know
the job and for you it's hard to see this
happen.
You've flown the aircraft those same
aircraft for 12 years, but at the same time,
over 60 people died on that airplane and it

(31:35):
crashed right into them.
So somebody's got to be accountable,
somebody's got to be responsible, and
people want to know how it happened.
How could this have happened, right?
So, um, from your point of view,
incompetence wasn't the issue, because can
you even survive in those jobs at that
level if you're incompetent?

(31:56):
I mean, is that even possible?
There's a lot of people that get away with
incompetence in their jobs.
Yeah with degrees.

Austin (32:02):
I mean where it's like, you know, maybe not
as good or whatever, but just like straight
incompetence.
But I would say there's a lot of crashes
that I'm very familiar with, not just
rotorcraft but also, you know, fixed-wing
as well.

Lara (32:14):
Yeah.

Austin (32:17):
But specifically crashes that I'm aware of,
that I know the people involved in the
crash where I'm you know have kind of a
better understanding of for various reasons,
and I go, oh man, good guy, good dude, he's
incompetent in that moment.

Lara (32:29):
Bad decision.

Austin (32:31):
Yeah, moment that was incompetent, or even
over a period of time.
You know, one of the things you'll hear
kind of in aviation is most crashes come
back to a well, we kind of all knew that
that guy was going to get into that crash.
We kind of all knew something would happen
at some point.
There's a lot of especially military
aviation crashes where, because we do
things that civilians aren't allowed to do,

(32:52):
but we do have to have some capacity to do
them, but sometimes people take some a
little more leeway with that, and so then
you have instances where they say, hey, we
always knew, because of his attitude or
because of the way that he flew, or he was
always kind of pushing the envelope, we
always knew this was going to kind of
happen.
So it wasn't really a surprise to the
people in the unit.
That happens all the time.

Lara (33:14):
But now this happens.
But now this happens and people want to
know whose fault it was.

Austin (33:18):
Yeah, so was it their fault?
So fault is a hard thing to say.
There's going to be a lot of different
layers to it.
You know there's a couple different ways to
think about it.
You can think about it in terms of an
accident chain.
Sometimes we'll say where it's, like, hey,
an accident chain is a series of events.
If you remove one of those chains then the
accident doesn't happen.
You know, at this point, further down, Um,

(33:39):
and that could be a million different
things.
It could be one small mistake where it's
not incompetence, and that's we may talk
more about that.
Um, where you go, oh man, I could see
myself making that small mistake.
That doesn't mean it's incompetent, it
doesn't mean it was, it could have been a
mistake.
But those are two kinds of different things.
I make mistakes in aviation all the time.
I don't think you've.
I wouldn't want to fly with somebody that
said they never made a mistake because

(34:00):
they're not telling the truth.

Lara (34:01):
Yeah because there's so much to do.
It's impossible that you're always going to
be right.
That's right, but those mistakes are-.

Austin (34:08):
It's how you recover, right, it's how you
recover, but never rise to the level of
incompetence where you go.
Oh, hey, I got a little bit off on altitude,
or hey, I did miss a radio call, or you
know.
Or I misjudged the wind.
Misjudged the wind.
Yeah, hey, that landing was a little bit
rougher than I'm used to.

Lara (34:23):
I've had a few of those.

Austin (34:24):
Hey, I've had landings where I go.
Yeah, that was my best one, right?

Lara (34:27):
Yeah.

Austin (34:31):
Yeah, I need to.
Yeah, it made a mistake and now it's
experience.

Lara (34:35):
But this was shocking because, first of all,
it was captured on camera.
Secondly, it's a super busy airport.
People fly in and out of there all the time,
so a lot of people are familiar with it.
And then, thirdly, you just don't see this
happen all that often.

Austin (34:52):
That's, I think the biggest factor is just
how infrequently it does happen.
Right, Because if you kind of look back at
the data to say how often are aviation
accidents, especially commercial aviation
accidents, how often do commercial aviation
accidents happen where there are actual
casualties involved, where people die as a
result of?

Lara (35:10):
it Right.

Austin (35:11):
It just doesn't happen in the last 20 years.

Lara (35:14):
You think about.
I mean because I've flown for 35 years.
I've flown all over the world and all over
this country and you see aircraft all the
time.
You know how busy the skies are.
And sometimes you think to yourself it's a
miracle there aren't more accidents, but
there's a very efficient system that's in
place.
And I mean you can shed some light on this

(35:34):
for me.
But my understanding, particularly post
9-11, when you are dealing with areas like
Washington DC, and not just Washington DC,
we're not talking about Dulles Airport or
BWI Baltimore Airport just a little further
away in Maryland.
There You're talking about DCA.
So you are close to the city, you are close

(35:55):
to the White House, you are close to the
white house, you are close to the head of
the defense intelligence agency that's
headquartered in alexandria, virginia.
You see it, when you take over land at dca,
you are right.
By all those national monuments I mean the
number of guns almost across the street
counter terror, that's right yeah in fact,
that's the closest right going into dca.
You drive right by it most of the time, so

(36:18):
you have this area of the country which is
concentrated I mean you talk about national
security threats concentrated in a tiny
space that is DCA.
Plus, it has shorter runways, some of them
right.
I mean you need to be specially trained and
specially certified to land there.

Austin (36:40):
Yeah, well, in terms of airline pilots, you
know all airline pilots in theory could
land there, but there are a lot of
additional controls that happen in that
area.

Lara (36:46):
There are additional controls there and
there are very specific routes.
That is one of the most controlled
airspaces in the United States of America,
so for it to happen there is really
shocking.

Austin (37:01):
Yeah.

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(38:47):
What did you think when you first saw the
news?
What was the first thing that went across
your mind?

Austin (38:54):
Well the first thing that I heard reported
was that it was yeah.
The first thing that I heard reported was
that it was a police helicopter.

Lara (39:00):
That's right, it was confusing Again.

Austin (39:02):
It's like, immediately the reporting out of
the gate is kind of not right.
And so I actually initially went, oh man,
well, did a moral come out on that later,
or whatever.
And then I didn't think too much about it.
And then the tech started rolling in,
saying what?
From friends at the unit.
Hey, did you hear about it?
Did you know what's going on?

(39:25):
Wasn't one of ours?
Just to give a little more context, what I
did is I reached out to a friend that was
still there and I just said, hey, was it
our guys Meaning?
Was it the company that I used to be in?
Andrew, at that time the accident aircraft
was actually in a different company than I
was in, and so I wanted to know was it
Alpha Company, the company that I was in?
Because if it wasn't, it was high

(39:45):
likelihood I wouldn't know the pilots.
You know.
Obviously you can't talk about who it is
specifically and everything.
And he said, no, it was, you know other
company.
And so I kind of went, okay, good, not good
in the sense you don't want to be anybody,
but you never want it to be your own
friends.
And then shortly thereafter I started
getting texts hey, here's who it was, and

(40:07):
so it was unexpected.
I didn't know that Andrew had gone to that
company.

Lara (40:15):
So, that's kind of how it was.

Austin (40:17):
how I found out Was that a gut blow when
you found out it was Andrew, especially
when you think it's not, when you think
it's not going to be your guys.
Yeah, when you think it's not going to be
your friends.
You think okay, and you kind of yeah, you
kind of go to bed.
Actually, I was in bed, so I kind of found
that out.
Okay, it's in the other company I worry
about here in terms of being people that I
know, and then went to bed and then, while
I was in bed, I got you know more
information.

(40:38):
Um, yeah, it's a gut blow.
Um, yeah, especially kind of in the way
that that that happened.
Um, and then watching kind of the rollout
from there, especially because when you see
that it's somebody that you know is so high,
so high quality, um, you know that it's not
going to be just incompetence, meaning hey,
well, this is one of those situations where
it's like we all kind of knew this guy was
dangerous, where I'm like, well, you can

(41:00):
write that off right away, he's not.
And then further kind of as more
information came out, seeing like how that
situation played out, applying it to myself
and I think this is true of certainly
everybody at the unit that I've talked to
that I served with at the time, that's out
now or that's still there, we look at it
and we go.
Man, I could have had the same thing happen
to me because the situation was complicated.

Lara (41:23):
What was so complicated?

Austin (41:25):
Well, so the first thing that happened is,
as they're coming down there, keep in mind,
this is a normal event for them in terms of
the training that they were doing, the
evaluation that they're doing, a normal
event for them in terms of the training
that they were doing, the evaluation that
they're doing.
This is very normal.
This is a.
This is a every you know, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday if there's guys
going out and doing stuff, just like this,
crew members going out and doing this kind
of stuff, so this is a normal day.

(41:46):
When I kind of saw the route, I went oh,
they're coming back from, they're coming
back from training.
I know exactly where they are and that's
where we'd usually come back and in that
direction they're going home.

Lara (41:55):
they're going home for the night, they're
done and that's something I just want to
point out is that these routes there are
routes in and out of every airport, every
base, I mean, and these are specific,
well-known, standardized routes that
everybody uses, which is part of how you
keep it safe yeah, and actually at that
unit you actually have to spend more time
there when you first get there flying with

(42:16):
an instructor yeah um, then you ordinarily
would in the army because it's so
complicated.

Austin (42:20):
So even though when I got there I have a
lot of other experience coming in there,
I'm one of the most experienced people in
the unit and I still had to spend more
hours flying with another instructor just
to get you kind of used to the routes and
everything.
But by the time you're through that, and
especially as you go for the next couple of
years, you get really used to the area and

(42:40):
so a few different things that happen in
this scenario.
So Tower at some point calls PAT-25, so
that's their call sign, pat-25 being the
Blackhawk.
So they call PAT-25 and say, hey, your
traffic is a CRJ just south of Wilson
Bridge at 1,200 feet descending.

Lara (43:02):
And the CRJ is for the civilian plane.
That's right.
The American Airlines flight.

Austin (43:06):
Yeah, so it's actually PSA Airlines and
they actually go by Blue Street call signs.
So Blue Street 5342 would have been their
call sign that they were using on the
radios.
It's an American Airlines flight number.
So Blue Streak 5342 would have been their
call sign that they were using on the
radios.
It's an American Airlines flight number.
And so, looking at the point where that
radio call was made, hey, you need to be
looking for traffic.
This is their location.
The helicopter, essentially, is on the
opposite end of the runway, so the
airplanes are coming in to land on the

(43:27):
runway.
The helicopter is beyond the runway, on the
other side of the airport, and so, from the
helicopter's perspective, again, it's at
night.
They're wearing night vision, more than
likely.
You're looking straight down the runway and
you're seeing not just the airplane that
you need to be looking at, but also every
other aircraft that's landing on that
runway, which, because of night vision, you

(43:50):
can see aircraft for 50 or a hundred miles,
ones that aren't even going to land there,
ones that are going to go land to go land
at Anacostia Bowling, are going to go land
at Andrews, which are both there, that are
going to go land at Davis and Army Airfield,
where you're going back to, you can see all
of that.

Lara (44:03):
And what do you see?
Is it mainly the lights?
It's the lights, yeah, and I know people
have said there was the lights of Crystal
City right.
That was behind that.

Austin (44:21):
Yeah, that does play into it, but that
plays into it later on.
So initially, you can look out and you can
just see this line of aircraft, and so
you're going to pick out the light that you
think is the one that they're talking about
and focus on that one, and you know that's
the one that you're supposed to avoid.
Okay, so then Andrew requested visual
separation, which?

Lara (44:33):
is what.

Austin (44:33):
Which just means I can see them.
Hey, air traffic control, you don't need to.
You don't really need to pay as close of
attention.
You don't need to be responsible for making
sure we don't hit each other.
Because I can see them, I can avoid them.
Okay, which that was a pretty standard
procedure there.
As long as you could see the aircraft,
you'd request visual separation.
It's a way of kind of taking some of the
burden away from air traffic control,

(44:54):
because they're super busy as well.

Lara (44:56):
And you're letting them know that in the
aircraft we see what you're talking about
that's right, yeah, traffic and side
request visual separation.
But is it possible, he was looking at a
different aircraft.

Austin (45:05):
I would say almost 100% likely.
So I think that probably what happened is
they picked out the wrong aircraft because
part of that air traffic control
communication the last part of it was they
said, talking about the airplane that
they're supposed to be going to is circling
to land three three.
So the runway that they're kind of looking
down is runway one.
Yes, that was the more commonly used runway

(45:27):
because it's 7,200 feet long.
Runway three three is only 5,200 feet long.

Lara (45:31):
So it's more challenging.

Austin (45:48):
Yeah, so it's more challenging down runway
one.
They're expecting that aircraft to land
runway one because that's what we would
usually see.
Matter of fact, I never one time saw an
aircraft land on runway three three while I
was there.
It's not because they weren't I can go into
more detail about that later but they're
kind of already preloaded for, because
that's what I've always seen.
And that last part, circling the land three,

(46:08):
three was actually cut off in the Blackhawk.
So what do you mean?
It was cut off.
So the NTSB reported that that part of the
communication was not recorded by the
Blackhawk, meaning it can be, for any
number of reasons, where their traffic
controller set it, but due to antenna
position or atmospheric conditions, or, you

(46:28):
know, there's a limited number of radio
frequencies that we use for aviation and so
there there's duplicates.
But that could be a duplicate one that's a
hundred miles away and just somehow it's
uncommon but occasionally will get picked
up by your radio and you don't actually
hear what they say, but it just cuts your
ability to hear them off.

Lara (46:47):
What are the chances of that happening?

Austin (46:48):
Very, very, very small.
Yeah, so very small.

Lara (46:52):
But it's confirmed by the NTSB from the
recordings from the flight launch.

Austin (46:55):
That's what the NTSB is saying right now is
that, based on the, they're calling a
cockpit voice recorder.
My understanding it's really not a cockpit
voice recorder per se, because it's not a
microphone, it's just.
It's a different system.
But essentially that last part of the
communication was never received by the
Blackhawk and they may never know why that
is, but it does happen.
And they may never know why that is, but it
does happen.
It's relatively rare.
But in that moment the chances of it

(47:17):
happening too, where it's that last little
critical bit of the information in this
particular scenario, that it's a helicopter,
like all of that, is just again one of the
chances, infinitely small, but it did
happen.
And so now the Blackhawk doesn't really
have the, the Blackhawk crew members don't
really have the critical piece of
information to understand that, oh, there's

(47:38):
an airplane that's not just going to come
straight in here and we're going to go to
the left of them and never cross paths Down
runway one, down runway one, we're going to
stay over the river, they're going to stay
over their side of the river and we're
never going to cross paths.
They're missing the critical, which now
means there's actually an airplane that's
going to cross their path once to go over
to the east side of the river and then it's
going to take a hard turn to go into runway
33 and cut right in front of them, and they

(48:01):
never heard that critical piece of
information.

Lara (48:04):
So what happens next right after that?

Austin (48:08):
Yeah, so the next thing that happens in the
sequence of events, the CRJ, the American
5342, they continue their approach.
They just when they get about at the bridge
they start to break off and turn over the
kind of Eastern shore over Maryland, and
they're still descending.
The Blackhawk is slowly getting closer and

(48:29):
closer and closer to kind of the point of
impact.
Another thing that usually would happen to
us there's a place called Haines Point.
It's actually on the helicopter route
charts.
It's depicted on there If you're looking at
kind of a map of the area.
It's a little island that's just kind of
south of the harbor.
In that area it's kind of the last.
It's the island's closest to the airport.

(48:51):
Haines Point's the southern tip of that
island and so what would typically happen?
There's a reason why I said I never
actually physically saw anybody land there
is because air traffic control would
typically hold us at Haines Point and so
when you're north they would just make a
call.
You know, pat, whatever hold at Haines
Point, they wouldn't even necessarily tell
you why you're holding.

(49:12):
And when you're at 200 feet and you're
trying to hold, especially at night, a lot
of other factors, that's a low altitude for
anybody.
For helicopter it's still low altitude, um,
so your hands are pretty full, so you're
not really worried about why I need to hold.
I'm just worried that I do need to hold,
and so you're.
You're busy, kind of turning there in
circles.
I know guys that would slow back to a hover,
um, which comes with its own difficulties.

(49:32):
It's kind of just a dealer's choice.
I could see an argument for either one of
those, sure, but because of that you never
really see anybody land runway three, three
and you never crossed that path when
they're landing runway three, three.

Lara (49:44):
Because you're, because you're staying
there, you're holding.

Austin (49:46):
Because you're holding in this place.
That's about a mile North.
So that was my experience.
I don't know if that was a rule or not.
You know I don't have a reason to suspect
that it was, but I do know that that was
what was commonly done and that again, just
it would reduce your kind of situational
awareness to what the airplanes do when
they're landing 3-3.

Lara (50:04):
But you don't know if that's what happened.

Austin (50:05):
No, I don't this evening, so that's, that's
you speculating, so I know that for a fact.
I don't know what the rule actually says,
so I wouldn't say that this is a case where
anybody necessarily did anything wrong.
In this event, the controller likely just
thought they've got visual separation, not
knowing that that last critical bit of

(50:26):
information was cut off.
There's no way for the controller to know,
because he said it.

Lara (50:29):
Yes, so this is a key point in the
investigation.
We have some video here of the.
This should be from the tower right.
Traffic 2 is up for runway.
Can we listen to this and just see what
your thoughts are on it?
This is the tower telling the helicopter
crew that there's traffic just south of the

(50:51):
Woodrow Bridge.

Austin (50:56):
That's right.
So it says PAT-25, telling them where the
traffic is.
Now, keep in mind, pat-25 is due north of
runway one.
They're looking down the runway and they're
seeing those other aircraft.
What you can't really see on here is that
there's a bunch of other aircraft Every
three miles basically, there's another
airplane also lined up to do an approach to
runway one.
So that's what they're looking at.

(51:16):
They're looking at a series of lights and
trying to pick the right light out.
But that last part and it's on here it says
setting up for runway three, three.
I hear it as circling runway, circling
runway three, three.
Either way, it's essentially the same bit
of information.
That's the part that's cut off, that last
part, so there's.
So they would be making the assumption that,
oh look, they're all set up for runway one.

(51:36):
They must be coming into land runway one.
They lose that last bit of critical
information.
And so the way that the helicopter routes
there route four follows the eastern
shoreline the airplanes go straight into
land on runway one and kind of never cross
over the helicopter route after they cross
the bridge.

Lara (51:54):
Okay, let's play it and see what happens
here this difference proof.

Austin (52:00):
American 1630 tower will be one lot boy
chapter up for only three.
This has one small funnel.
Yes, that's where the visual separation is
approved.
The controller's probably thinking, okay,
they can see them, they're going to avoid
them, but he doesn't know that that last
bit of information was cut off.
So it's likely at this point pat 25 is
looking at the aircraft behind them which

(52:20):
is going to land on runway one, and they
don't know that there's another aircraft
circling the land, runway three, three, who
they're getting closer to and at this point,
if you can pause it for one second, that
terrain um, if you've been there before, I
think it's Colonial Heights there, but
there's rising terrain there.
You've also got more lights along the shore.

(52:41):
There's the Ferris wheels right there, the
casino is there, and so you've got rising
terrain.

Lara (52:48):
You've got all the stuff.
Yeah, the MGM Grand is right there.

Austin (52:50):
And so the CRJ is slowly kind of descending
closer to those things, or even to a point
where they'd be, from the helicopter's
perspective, potentially below them but at
the very least real close to them.
If they're looking at the wrong aircraft
and thinking it's the correct aircraft now
at this point, that's probably in their
night vision for the most part.

(53:10):
Meanwhile, the other aircraft that's going
to eventually hit them, or vice versa, is
outside, on the peripheral vision, where
they can only see through their unaided
night vision, and it's working its way kind
of further away from their central field of
view, which is making it more difficult to
pick up Included.
It's down closer to the lights and all
these other factors.

(53:31):
And so at this point it would be really
hard, missing that key piece of information,
to look over there and try to find them,
and they're not even necessarily trying to
find them because they think they're
looking at the the right aircraft.
And then, if you continue, plan it, it gets
more complicated.

(53:54):
All right, and if you could pause that for
one more second?
So he said do you have the CRJ in sight Now?
Keep in mind, from a helicopter, with
airplanes, and these speeds, with lights
facing you, they're all just lights.
So to say that it's a CRJ, because there
are actually two different types of
airplane there.
One's a CRJ and one's an Airbus 319.
There are two different kinds of airplanes
but they're all just lights to the
helicopter crew, especially with night
vision on Sure kinds of airplanes.

(54:14):
But they're all just lights to the
helicopter crew, especially with night
vision on.
It's just, you know, you've, you've seen
traffic before with night vision on, and so
I'm sure you can read it Like all you see
is the headlights, you don't know what's
behind them, and so even if they were
looking to say it's a CRJ, that's not
really critical or helpful information.
Um, where it is would have been helpful
again, but the controller doesn't know.
They missed that critical part of
information before, and now he's asking to

(54:35):
confirm.
The reason is because they got a collision
alert inside, uh, inside the tower, which
is on their radar.
So that's the controller seeing a kind of
like a beeping red light and an alarm
that's going off saying hey, there's this,
two aircraft are getting too close together,
and so the controller now is going oh, I
gotta say something again.
I never was asked again if I had aircraft
in sight there, so that would be highly

(54:56):
unusual, and so I would suspect that at
this point in the PAT-25, they're probably
going.
Huh, that's kind of weird.
I've never.
You know, that's unusual.
They would ask us if we have them in sight,
but again they're looking at the wrong
aircraft.
Also, the part that says pass behind was
also cut off.
In this case it was cut off because in a

(55:17):
Blackhawk the way that you key the mic, the
microphone or the radio is by pulling on a
trigger.
Okay, I've had it happen to me before.
Almost every pilot I know has had this
happen before, where you hear air traffic
control talking.
But you were about to say something.

Lara (55:33):
Yes.

Austin (55:34):
And so you step on each other.
And you kind of step on each other, yeah,
and just, you're not quick enough, your
mind can't think and do everything and your
fingers kind of already moving.
And so you briefly kind of step on each
other and so, in this instance, that's what
happened.
The other one, we don't know why.
This one, we do know why, it's because they
did intended to, and from their, from their
mind, I would imagine, they're looking at

(55:57):
this other craft.
They're like, well, yeah, I was, I'm gonna
pass behind them.
A matter of fact, we're never going to
cross paths yeah um, not really an issue,
and but they may have had a where they're
like hey, I wonder if our situational
awareness is where it should be.
So there's a reason they're asking me again
right it, just it's it's unusual, but it's
not um completely clear but it's not
completely clear about why they're asking

(56:18):
and so, again, this will all come out
further investigation with the NTSB about
what the conversation was in the cockpit.
But this is going to play into the altitude
situation right now.
So you can see it says 003 on there, that's
300 feet.
I'm not an expert on the way that the, the
radar, reports everything, but it is.
It is essentially a rounded up number.

Lara (56:39):
uh, to kind of oversimplify it so pat, two,
five zero zero three kilo, so that's saying
300 feet I see and the crj is at 500 feet
at this point and so that's kind of like
the plane is higher, it's above the, the
plane's higher and it but it's descending
to come into land on that runway that runs,
uh, to run to the northwest there.
Which one?

Austin (56:57):
So there's one runway that's more or less
straight up and down.
There's a smaller one that's going
northwest, like that.
So they're going to make a left turn to
land on that shorter runway, north and
northwest.

Lara (57:09):
Okay, so let's play it and see what happens.

Austin (57:16):
So again, they approved visual separation.
But PAT-25 is looking at the wrong aircraft,
likely at this point.
Yeah, so at that point both of those
aircraft are in the water at this point.

Lara (57:44):
Is that where it happens?
Yeah, they're right there.

Austin (57:47):
Yeah, so that replay of it has already
happened at this point.
So another thing that happened that's not
shown on this.
I've seen it in a few other places where
I've seen it's kind of where there's more
breadcrumbs, if you will, kind of left by
the aircraft and it also shows their
airspeeds.
It looks to me I don't know if this is 100%
going to be the case or not, but it looks
to me like the Blackhawk slows back from a

(58:08):
hundred knots, so a hundred nautical miles
per hour, a hundred knots to probably 80.
So as they get close and they get asked the
second time about about then they slow back
to 80 knots.
There's a lot of good reasons for that.
A hundred knots and 80 knots are two very
normal Blackhawk speeds for a variety of
reasons.
I'm not going to go into the details but
but they would be normal, comfortable air

(58:29):
speeds for a Blackhawk.
One of the things that you do as a
helicopter pilot if you're not sure about
what's happening in front of you, is you
slow back.
Sure, hey, let me build myself some more
time.
I'll build myself some.
You know time buys you options.
Yeah, right, so I'm going to slow back to

(58:55):
80 knots here and maybe it doesn't even
articulate it.
Maybe she does, but starts to slow back and
then, kind of, the third option would be
you start to realize that it's a little bit
tense or situation and big muscles beat
little muscles, and so as you start to get
tense you know humans just- in general,
we're all familiar, I think, with you start
to get tensed up.
Well, if you're flying a helicopter and you
start to have that kind of sympathetic

(59:15):
muscular response and you pull back on the
controls a little bit, in any of those
scenarios where you're intentionally
slowing back or you unintentionally pull
back on the cyclic a little bit, you're
going to climb.

Lara (59:28):
But what you know for sure is that that
helicopter slowed down.

Austin (59:33):
That's what it appears to me, based on some
other stuff outside of here that I've seen,
and so it looks like they slowed back and
that would be a really unfortunately.
Is it possible to hold it right at 200 feet?
It is.
It's difficult to do if you're flying right
at the max altitude that you can be at to
begin with.
It is difficult to do to do if you're
flying right at the max altitude that you
can be at to begin with.

(59:54):
It is difficult to do but it can be done.
But again, this is one of those where I say
this isn't some level of incompetency, this
is a level of, honestly, a pretty normal
execution of that particular kind of
maneuver if you will.
In the abstract, the Army allows a plus or
minus 100 feet in that maneuver.
Sure, because that's what your altitude
allowance are.
Now this case, 200 feet, is a maximum
altitude for those routes.

(01:00:15):
Um, so you kind of don't have anywhere to
give if you make a mistake yes, you've gone
outside of the, the maximum allowance if
you're flying at 200 feet yeah.
So that's where I see that altitude.
If it gets off by you know, 50 or 100 or
150 feet, I would would go.
Okay, not the best execution of that, but
it's also where I go.
If I put myself in that seat I'm like, well,
I can't say that like I've always gotten it
exactly right.

(01:00:35):
And if I start that maneuver at my max
altitude, the chances of me getting off
there, it's a fairly high probability that
that'll happen.
So again, not bad piloting, but it is a
little bit of a mistake, right?

Lara (01:00:48):
Okay, let me ask you the dumb person's
question.
Okay, just from watching that video, what I
think a lot of people saw is you're always
looking at that as a civilian and wondering
why can't they just see what's in front of
them?

Austin (01:01:06):
Yeah, so that goes back to some of the
limitations we talked about with night
vision Sure, where you're looking through a
40-degree field of view, where you think
you've got the thing you're supposed to be
looking at, where air traffic control is
drawing your attention to that thing, even
by mistake, but they were kind of used to
that.
Yeah, they were kind of used to that.
But once it's drawn your attention in,
because you lose that peripheral vision and
because you don't have peripheral vision as

(01:01:27):
much.

Lara (01:01:31):
If that's the case, right, that's the case.
It's not for certain, but yeah, but it's
just the thing that's confusing here, and
maybe it's a question of timing, yeah, but
you've, what you see is the black hawk
heading straight for a plane, and you're
wondering why the hell I mean isn't the top
of a back yeah why could they not just see
what was in front of them?

Austin (01:01:49):
yeah, well, so from the black hawk
perspective, you know some of the things
I've described, but also descending into
the lights.
Another thing is, again you having looked
through night vision before, when lights
are facing you, they're super bright.
But if that car turns a little bit now, you
can tell what kind of car it is.
The lights are way less bright, and so in
this scenario, the jet is actually turned
slightly away from the Blackhawk, and so

(01:02:09):
it's not, and so its lights would be, by
comparison, dimmer than the ones that are
coming straight at it yes.
The other issue from the jet's perspective
about why didn't the jet see number one.
The NTSB is saying that they think that the
jet did see about one second before impact.

Lara (01:02:22):
Because they heard some indication.

Austin (01:02:25):
Yeah, they said there was an auditory
indication in the cockpit.
I don't know exactly what was said it
sounds like something was said, but also
they went to full deflection.
It's probably another OPE, yeah something,
but they went to full deflection.
I've never one time gone to full deflection,
so that means you were startled and really
trying to what is full deflection?

Lara (01:02:42):
That means when you're pulling as hard as
you can, meaning you want to pull back as
the airplane?
Will go.
It's awful.

Austin (01:02:47):
But because of that, airspeed jet engines
have a spool of time, a bunch of other
factors, one second before impact.
It's not going to do very much for you.
They did everything they could do.
It's just because of those factors.
There's not much.
But I would say in terms of the airplane
not being able to see the helicopter
because of the way they were coming in on
that approach it would be virtually
impossible with this big left turn in they

(01:03:09):
have to look at a helicopter that's
essentially below them, kind of out, where
there's parts of airplane.
There's not windows there, and so they're
making this big turn in.
They're under the impression that anybody
there air traffic control has told them to
avoid them and all of that.
They've kind of only heard one half of that
conversation because they're on different
frequencies.

Lara (01:03:27):
Well, that's the other thing, yeah, is that
now ntsb has to go and take those different
conversations right and piece them back
second by second to look at them, to
understand what each person was hearing?
The only person who was hearing both
conversations was air traffic control.
That's right.
Yeah, um, and so you know what's amazing to
me?
I know these guys deal with this kind of

(01:03:48):
stuff all the time and obviously you, you
know you can't panic on the job, but the
guy's pretty like even keeled the entire
time.

Austin (01:03:56):
Yeah Well, this is.
It just gives some indication of just the
familiarity with the area.
What's really frankly impressive to me is
what happens afterwards and we got to hear
a little bit of that, but just the, they
immediately go into telling other aircraft
to do go-arounds, telling other aircraft to
go to different places, right, um, and
they're not.
They're not panicky, they're not screaming

(01:04:17):
they're not flustered, you know they're.
Clearly there's a more, there's a level of
intensity with their voice, sure, um, where
it picks up a little bit, um, but from the
moment of impact all the way through
everything that happened after that, it
seems to me like air traffic control did
excellent job, um, of maintaining control.

Lara (01:04:30):
You don't have the luxury right of coming
apart in that moment because there's so
many other planes and you have a lot of
responsibility riding on you.
And now you have a catastrophic incident,
and that's only going to make things more
stressful.

Austin (01:04:46):
In aviation I always say you have to have a
memory of a goldfish, right?
Because if I made a mistake here, I can't
let it compound, right.
So I just have to kind of forget about it
and maybe we'll debrief it, we'll talk
about it later on, but I have to let it go
and move on and just try to continue to do
better and better and better.
That's also true of our traffic controllers,
where whatever happened before there might

(01:05:06):
not be anything they can do about that, but
but how they um, you know how they're able
to execute.
What they need to do now is going to impact
people in the future so, okay, if I were to
boil it down.

Lara (01:05:17):
Listening to you, right, I know from
speaking to you before that you would never
get ahead of the investigation, and that
there's so many complicating factors that
you know the devil is always in the details,
right and so, and you know, even altitude
itself is not simple, because it could be
altitude.
There's so many complicating factors, the
devil is always in the details, right, and

(01:05:37):
even altitude itself is not simple, because
it could be altitude above sea level,
altitude above ground level, the different
levels of altitude that were cited the
instructor, pilot saying one, the pilot
saying something else can be explained away
if the helicopter was descending at that
time, yeah, and so, once you get into it,
there's a lot of detail that changes your
perspective.
But at the end of the day, right now, when

(01:05:57):
you sit back, based on what you know about
the unit, about the area, about the flights,
about the aircraft and about what happened,
is you're leaning towards just the fact
that they were.
It was that part of the radio traffic that
was not transmitted or heard.

Austin (01:06:14):
I would say it's kind of a holistic system
failure, where there shouldn't be an
opportunity, where, if you miss this one
little bit of critical information.
Or when I actually heard it the first time,
I didn't know that they'd missed it, but I
thought, man, it'd be really easy to
misunderstand that.
Not meaning I didn't hear it, meaning I

(01:06:35):
just didn't understand exactly what they
said.
I heard what they said but I didn't
interpret it right.
Yes, it'd be really easy to do that based
on hey, I always see them land runaway one,
so I'm always kind of expecting that, and
then they say wrong way, three, three.
But I don't exactly process it, that's what
I initially thought it happened, which
again is a whole reason for why you have to
withhold judgment.
But then as soon as I saw the more recent
NTSB update that said that part was cut off
for the Blackhawk, I was like oh, now, that
makes sense, there's nothing, there's no

(01:06:56):
way to kind of regain your situational
awareness from there, but to complicate
matters because of the fact that we
normally be held north at Haynes Point,
which procedurally would seem to be a
better way to do things.
Now, there might be a hundred different
reasons why that controller didn't, in this
moment do it.
So I would hesitate to say like, oh, this
controller did a bad job, or the controller
broke the rules, cause I'm not, I'm not

(01:07:16):
aware of any rules that were that were
broken.
Um, you know, that'll come out in the
investigation.
If there was a policy that said they were
supposed to hold there, um, but it appears
that again, the controller, where it's like
you know, would have been good to have more
information.
Yeah, but it looks to me like they did give
what they're required to give.
But again it's this whole kind of procedure
to get down there, the route itself.

(01:07:36):
To further complicate things, the chart
says you're supposed to fly at the highest
altitude, so would it have been good if
they were at a slightly lower altitude?
Yeah, it would have.
Would have been good if they were never
allowed to cross on that route when
aircraft are landing 3-3 on runway 3-3.
Yeah, that would have been good.
So to me it's kind of a bigger system

(01:07:58):
failure that was relying on all these
little individual instances that you have
to get right when, if you just take one of
them out and the accident doesn't happen,
you know if they're allowed to fly at a
lower altitude and there's some nuance to
that conversation.
But you know, when I was in the unit it was
certainly put out, and I would agree with
the position, that you should fly at the

(01:08:19):
highest altitudes unless weather or ATC
tells you to fly lower.

Lara (01:08:24):
And so again they were doing what they
thought they were supposed to be doing and
what you're talking about here, just for
people who don't know, the context is that,
given the nature of the area, the
sensitivity of the buildings that are
around there, the national security issues,
the busyness of the airport, right, the
amount of traffic that's there that there

(01:08:46):
are at certain, on certain routes, at
certain levels, you're restricted.
Right, it's restricted airspace, so you are
restricted to certain, to obeying certain
rules, right, and part of that is, at a
certain point you can't go above 200 feet,
you can't go below it, Below it, yeah, what

(01:09:08):
it says on the helicopter route chart.

Austin (01:09:09):
It actually says helicopters are expected
to fly at the highest of the altitudes
unless?
And the two things that it allows you to
deviate from would be weather and ceilings.
So in other words if the weather's too bad,
which?
at 200 feet wouldn't really ever happen, or
is directed by air traffic control, and so

(01:09:30):
you should be flying at the maximum
altitude on the route.
Again, now, because of all the way that
everything else played out, it doesn't
really give you anywhere to go.
So if you don't execute that precisely and
get it right, then you're automatically
going to be off.
That's right.
So it's kind of like it's maybe not the you
know.
Should that have been written a different

(01:09:51):
way?
Is that really what the FAA wanted us to do?
Because that's what they wrote?
You know, I'm not really sure, but to me
it's a, it's kind of a whole picture where
all of these little things happen, that if
they don't happen that way, you know, if
they hear that they're landing runway three,
three little bit, and then they release,
and then it never happens.

(01:10:11):
Um, if they're allowed, if, if the chart
says that they can fly at a lower altitude,
would, would they have flown?
Or picked a different altitude instead of
200 feet?
Would they've been 100 or 150 and not
climbed up high enough to hit the airplane?
Yeah, that's certainly possible.
Um, you know, if at the last minute they
got a little more fidelity, uh, from air
traffic control in terms of which airplane
they're supposed to be looking at, hey,
your traffic's, you know, 10 o'clock,

(01:10:34):
confirm traffic inside, or something like
that.
Again, I don't think the controller
necessarily did anything wrong there, but
you know, would have been helpful, yeah, so
there's like all of these little things
that piece together that just it didn't
work in that moment.

Lara (01:10:48):
So sort of like a perfect storm.

Austin (01:10:50):
It was a perfect storm.
Yeah, Because you could have that happen a
million times and it could be just fine.
And yeah, just one time it happens.

Lara (01:10:57):
Okay, so I got to tell you something when I
did a little bit of homework.
You could call it and talk to a few people,
so I'd be curious to know your thoughts on
this.
So I'd be curious to know your thoughts on
this.
Some of the folks that I know who work in
intelligence were tracking they regularly

(01:11:25):
systematically track conversations among
certain bad actors and those networks, and,
especially when there is a catastrophic
event of any kind, you know they're
immediately, uh, hyper focused on whether
they hear any chatter, because it's an,
it's a?
It's one of the first questions that comes
to mind.
Right, you have something so unusual happen,
especially involving a military aircraft in

(01:11:46):
such a sensitive?
area and that's their job, Okay.
So what did they find?
Well, a lot of celebrating.
Obviously, that's not surprising, yeah.
But then and I want to find the exact words
here Then the conversation quickly turned

(01:12:07):
Let me find where I wrote it down To what
they said was coming next, which was SeaTac.
And I said what is SeaTac?
Do you know what SeaTac?

Austin (01:12:20):
is.
I do know what SeaTac is, I'm sure you do,
I'm sure you know.

Lara (01:12:23):
Now, I do know now, but you could probably
explain it better than me.

Austin (01:12:27):
Yeah, seattle Tacoma International Airport
yeah.

Lara (01:12:29):
Okay.
So, right after that happened, the traffic
that was picked up and when I say bad
actors, I was specifically.
What do you mean by bad actors?
And what they talked about was well, states,
foreign adversaries, states, but also just
to make sure that, right, you know the way

(01:12:51):
they describe it is advanced, persistent
threats.
So these are, you know, the kind of groups,
hacker groups that you know from their
actions tell you that they're working with
state adversaries, but you can't quite
prove it, because all of this is happening

(01:13:13):
in the cyber realm, where it's very easy to
mask where these are coming from.
And, in fact, one of the reasons it's
particularly difficult for us to figure
this stuff out is because President Obama,
as one of his last actions, gave away
control of the internet to a group, an
international consortium, which included
many of these state adversaries.

(01:13:34):
Right, I mean, that's a fact.
People can go and look it up.
I knew at the time when it happened, I
reported on it.
You know, repeatedly people kind of gloss
over it as if it doesn't matter, which is
just amazing to me in some ways, because it
matters so much.
But one of the things when you give up
jurisdiction and you give up control over
the internet, you make it easier for bad
actors to mask their tracks in the cyber

(01:13:58):
world and so you know, and the signatures
that they leave behind, right is, those are
the things that we track.
So they made it much harder to track that
when they gave up jurisdiction.
But there are other ways still to look at
these things.
And so what they documented in real time
was chatter on these, as they call them,

(01:14:21):
bad guy networks, where there was a lot of
celebrating, and then they said SeaTac will
be next, and then what happened a week
later?
Do you know?

Austin (01:14:31):
No.

Lara (01:14:32):
At that airport there was a collision on
the runway.
Oh, with the yeah Well not really a
collision, but with a two, the tail of one
aircraft.
You know, as they were, one aircraft was
moving taxiing.

Austin (01:14:49):
Yeah, I mean, what I can say is that, um
and probably your intelligence sources
would say this too a lot of times when,
when something like this happens, there's a
uh again, I'm not an intel guy, this is,
this is more of a lay person speaking here
um, there is a high uh degree of chatter.
That happens, sure, and there's a lot of

(01:15:09):
people trying to take credit for things.
Sometimes when you find out later there was
no credit, yeah, for anybody to you know.

Lara (01:15:14):
Oh yeah.

Austin (01:15:15):
Everybody wants to take credit for
something like that.

Lara (01:15:16):
Oh, you mean kind of like when the Taliban
used to say they killed 270 Americans.

Austin (01:15:21):
Yeah.

Lara (01:15:21):
And there wasn't one dead on the raid.

Austin (01:15:23):
Yeah, or you know A lot of instances where
that happens.
So I wonder if there were other airports
mentioned as well.
But we're not focused on that because we
found out that SeaTac something happened
there.
But what I can say for sure in both of
those instances that there was no ability
for any hacker network or anything.
Just on the Blackhawk side because again

(01:15:43):
that's where my expertise lies I saw a lot
of comments about could they have taken
over the helicopter, for instance, and the
answer is no.
The helicopter's technology is like
straight out of the 60s and 70s.
It failed in 1978.
It hasn't significantly changed in any way.
There is no way because that's pre-internet.

Lara (01:15:59):
Essentially there's no way for anybody to
take over that helicopter, which would be a
kind of spoofing right.
Yeah exactly, you would be sending data to
that aircraft.
That does not match reality.

Austin (01:16:11):
That helicopter is analog.
There is no way to spoof any— Even the GPS.

Lara (01:16:15):
The altitudes.

Austin (01:16:16):
Well, the GPS, that's another conversation.
It is possible, but they were on route.

Lara (01:16:19):
But you're talking about the altimeter, but
they were on—yeah.
The altimeter, specifically, which measures
the altitude right Exactly, since that's
the main— which is a different thing to the
GPS.

Austin (01:16:26):
That Also the NTSB has said they were en
route, yes, and so they were the only thing
that you could potentially do, but were
they at the altitude that they were
supposed to be at?

Lara (01:16:34):
Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.
That's right.

Austin (01:16:36):
So is GPS spoofing possible?
Yeah, I've been GPS spoofed before in other
countries, but is that a thing that can
happen In theory?
Did that happen here?
It wouldn't appear so because they were
where in.
It wouldn't appear so because they were
where.
In terms of X Y axis, they were where they
were supposed to be.
It's the Z axis that's in question.

Lara (01:16:52):
Right.
So if they had been moving on a different
route, you would have then looked at the
GPS data, yeah, but even then the pilots
are flying generally visually there.

Austin (01:17:03):
Andrew's been there for this is going on
his fourth year.
You know you fly over the river there, so
it's not something that like.
When I look at that number one, there's no
possibility to take over that aircraft.
Number two spoofing it wouldn't have any
impact, and so I think whatever credit if
anybody tries to take credit for that you
can just chop that off.
That is not what happened here.
100% that is not what happened here.

(01:17:23):
Even if there were attempts, it just
wouldn't be possible.

Lara (01:17:26):
And when you say never.
So you know, because I'm a journalist, I'm
always trying to look at words like that.
Right Because Well, hopefully you'll notice
I haven't said never or at all.
Well, you said, that could never happen.

Austin (01:17:36):
That could never happen in that particular,
in the way that this, that particular
series of events and a crash at that
location could never be attributed to
somebody taking over the aircraft, over the
aircraft, that particular aircraft, because
again, we're talking about specifically the
Lima model.

Lara (01:17:52):
So a UH-60L a.

Austin (01:17:52):
Lima model Blackhawk, because the Lima
model Blackhawk lacks kind of the upload
capability and also the ability to get any
of that information into the flight
controls or into the instruments.
It's just the way they're designed.
Right now it's not possible because,
frankly, because it's really old technology.

Lara (01:18:08):
Yeah, which is, in this case, may have been
a good thing.

Austin (01:18:11):
Yeah, it may have been a good thing,
certainly if that's a concern where you
know you don't want people to have the
ability to do that.
Now, on a broader sense, that's not
possible in virtually any airplane ever or
any helicopter ever where you can just
digitally take it over.
I'm not going to say that that's never
going to be possible.
Um, you know, people have seen, hey, there
is in fact DARPA has a Blackhawk that can

(01:18:32):
fly itself, which is kind of like an
advanced technology segment of the DoD
where they do have a Blackhawk that can fly
itself.
But that's one specific Blackhawk that's
been kitted and retrofitted with all kinds
of other technology.
So it's easy to kind of take that
information and then apply it in this
scenario, uh, incorrectly, if you will so

(01:18:53):
when you say that it's not possible, it is
possible with ships.

Lara (01:18:58):
So why is it not possible with aircraft?

Austin (01:19:00):
it is possible with ships.
I don't.
I don't know as much about ships, but I do
know that is possible.
But I think they're kind of remotely
controlled sometimes, uh-huh, um, because
their crews, you know, they go with the
skeleton, you put it on course you put it
on course and then the crew can go to sleep,
is my understanding.
And so you are able to kind of control it
from a centralized control facility?
Yes, that is not the case in aviation today.

Lara (01:19:21):
So when you're flying a Black Hawk and you
have all those instruments, are any of
those instruments besides the GPS hackable?

Austin (01:19:32):
No.

Lara (01:19:33):
Well, that's a good thing.

Austin (01:19:34):
Yeah, not in terms of, like you know,
hacking them as in real time or anything
like that.
Like are there, you know systems that you
can.
You know malware is always an issue and
obviously sometimes the systems get updated
in different ways.
That is possible.

Lara (01:19:48):
But that would be kind of a different
scenario.
What do you mean by that?

Austin (01:19:51):
Well, certainly like China, for instance,
has had places where they've been able to
put malware into certain components.

Lara (01:20:01):
Well, I'm glad you raised that because,
that is what people in the Intel world are
particularly concerned about is that so
many of these parts are manufactured in
China and the Chinese are inside our
electronic systems yeah, I mean, I do think
that it's a, it's a concern, it's something
we should should certainly kind of take
note of and be trying to prevent that.

Austin (01:20:22):
We are trying to prevent you know I'm sure
there are people in the Pentagon right now
trying to prevent that kind of stuff, but
again, is that even having that capability
where we have seen them do it they still
wouldn't have the ability to take over the
aircraft.
That aircraft doesn't even have autopilot.
So there's no aside from a human we call
them meat servos, right.

(01:20:43):
So you know there's a human that has to
move those controls, and so that's just an
additional kind of in this case, a safety
feature, if you will.
That would prevent that from being possible,
because you need a human, at the end of the
day, to move the controls.
So if you're going to try to crash in an
airplane, you still have to get a human to
do that, and so that's why I can say like,
in this particular instance, that's

(01:21:04):
definitely not the case.
There's all these other factors that would
lead me to believe this is how it could
have happened, but I can say for sure that
it was not any kind of control being taken
over by somebody else or anything like that.
That's one of the things that I heard
online that kind of made me start speaking
out as well.

Lara (01:21:18):
What about all the people that said, oh,
this came from the CIA and this follows the
flight path of helicopters going into the
agency up to Langley?

Austin (01:21:27):
Yeah, so I mean, obviously you can look on
a map and figure out where all that is.
This was a training flight, again, I know
that, all the people on the aircraft.
Now I would say, if you look at the mission
of that unit maybe you could ascertain why
training in certain places.
Again, I don't know that they landed in
Langley or didn't, but you could make some

(01:21:47):
assumptions about why they may or may go
into certain places, even on training
flights.

Lara (01:21:52):
Is it normal to be that route is normal for
training flights, right that?

Austin (01:21:57):
route is very like.
I said, it's a normal Tuesday.
I can't remember what day of the week, but
it was normal.
Whatever day of the week it is, that is a
normal day of the week for them.
That is the most kind of vanilla mission
that they do is go out and fly on the
helicopter routes.

Lara (01:22:08):
And where did it take off from?

Austin (01:22:10):
I think it took off from Davidson Army
Airfield.
So they took off from 12th Aviation
Battalion, fort Belvoir, and then inside of
Fort Belvoir you've got Davidson Army
Airfield.
So again, that's where the 12th Aviation
Battalion is.
That's where the flight originated from.
They may have done some stuff kind of
otherwise en route that I'm not aware of
any of that stuff.
But again, had they that would potentially

(01:22:32):
be normal for them, but flying the
helicopter routes themselves, taking off
from Davidson, flying around the helicopter
routes, super normal flight.

Lara (01:22:39):
Now one of the things because people raised
the CIA right One of the things that's
obviously very common in that world is you
can be a training flight but also be put
down as a support mission.

Austin (01:22:51):
Yeah, that is possible I guess, but I can
say that I never saw that there.
When I say that's possible, I guess I'm
saying for other organizations to do that.

Lara (01:22:58):
Yeah.

Austin (01:22:59):
You know, I don't know that 12th Aviation
Battalion does that.
I never saw that while I was there.
You know there was, and also I can say I
never flew to Langley while I was there.
Yeah, I flew to Langley while, I was there.
Yeah, I can say that unabashedly.
As far as I know, I never took anybody from
the CIA.
It's a military mission.
Yeah, you're supporting military customers.
For the most part, you know Secretary of
Defense on down, and so predominantly

(01:23:21):
generals, secretary level positions, that
kind of thing.
Cia's got their own assets to move them
around.

Lara (01:23:29):
I would assume it seemed like there was
just a spate of things going wrong with
aircraft around that time and since then.
Is that just because things are being
highlighted, or is it real?

Austin (01:23:41):
Yeah, I think that's one of the things
that's going to really have to be
scrutinized in the investigation, because
obviously people are paying more attention
to now.

Lara (01:23:48):
There's the Delta that flipped over in
Canada.
There's that aircraft.
It's just like.
It just feels like.
Suddenly you're looking at it thinking
should I be flying?

Austin (01:23:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think in general again, if
you kind of talk about the probability,
this is one spike on otherwise a very good
trend that we've had for the last 20 or so
years in terms of aviation, or so years in
terms of aviation.
You know, I crossed we ate before we sat
down to talk and I was there when we were
picking up the food and crossed the road
four or five, six times that is, I also

(01:24:23):
flew in today.
Of those two things, crossing the road four
or five or six times was far more dangerous
to my life than getting on the airplane
that I got on to fly up here, not even
close, and getting in the car to drive from
where I was to get to, um, you know, to the
studio far more dangerous than getting on
an airplane.
In terms of probability, um, you know, I
think there has been a um kind of
microscope put on it because of um,
specifically because of the path to five

(01:24:43):
crash.
I think that drew a lot of attention to it.
Um, and then the Delta crash.
Again, you've got a lot of number one, the
ability to record these things and put them
out on the internet and kind of everybody
sees it really quickly, and so it becomes
kind of sensationalized.

Lara (01:25:01):
It's also so catastrophic right.
And catastrophic yeah the thing is that you
could say don't want people die slipping in
their bath, you know than car accidents or
whatever.
But it's not like you have a good chance of
surviving when you slip in your bath.
You know then, even then you know then car
accidents or whatever.
But but it's not like you have a good
chance of surviving when you slip in your
bath and it's you know, you, you crash.

Austin (01:25:18):
Well, but apparently you know, if you look
at the crash in Toronto, everybody survived.
So it looks, it looks really horrible.
Which is unusual for aircraft, and it is
really unusual, obviously, but everybody
survived.
So again, like, if you just look at the
probabilities, it's still a very, very safe
way of traveling.

Lara (01:25:34):
Yes.

Austin (01:25:35):
I think you know, obviously we talked about
the.
There was an incident the day before with a
pad aircraft in DCA.
As it relates to that stuff specifically, I
think there's a lot of analysis that's
going to have to be done.
You mean, for another Black Hawk, Another
Black Hawk?

Lara (01:25:47):
Helicopter, another Blackhawk helicopter,
Another Blackhawk.

Austin (01:25:49):
Yeah, that happened the day before where
there was kind of another incident when it
was supposedly close to an aircraft that
chose not to land.

Lara (01:25:55):
But they were separated by a thousand feet.

Austin (01:25:57):
They were.
They had some vertical separation.
But I think kind of in the analysis the
NCSB is going to have to do is how often
were there close calls happening like this
Because of the different frequencies a
Blackhawk could cause?
A close call could cause an aircraft to do
a go-around or all these different things
could cause we didn't talk about TCAS, but
basically cause the airplane system to

(01:26:18):
notice that there's a helicopter down there
to tell the airplane to climb.
It would be entirely possible, because
you're not on the same radio frequency that
you'd never know as the Blackhawk that you
caused those.
So another question is going to be what was
the reporting like and how often were these
incidents happening?
Because if they were happening with
increased frequency, if you look at DCA,
they had a million passengers go through

(01:26:39):
there in a year in 1946.
By the 80s it was 16 million, now it's over
20 million and so you've just had this kind
of exponential increase in the use and
frequency of airplanes going to DCA.

Lara (01:26:51):
It's my favorite airport.
If I'm going to DC, it's right by the city.
Why would you fly in there?
Yeah?

Austin (01:26:57):
And so I'd kind of want to put that across
and then do the analysis and say hold on,
were we having a lot of collision alerts on
the radar?
Were we having a lot of resolution?
Advisories is what it's called when the
airplane gets to climb or is told to climb.
Advisory is what it's called when the
airplane gets to climb or is told to climb.
Were there a lot of those?
Was there an increasing frequency?
Were they happening at specific times of
day?

(01:27:17):
And then, furthermore, beyond that, were
those being collated and were they being
reported to the army and to the rest of the
department of defense?
Because if you're ignorant of it, if you
don't know that it's happening, then it's
hard for you to do anything about it.

Lara (01:27:29):
Right, then you're not going to fix it.
Okay, so can you give me a sense of what is
the feeling inside the unit?
I mean, um, that's pretty bad, it is.

Austin (01:27:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think because of the
increased level of scrutiny.
You know, because if it's just the three
crew members, this is on the news for a day
or two and then maybe some people hear
about it but maybe not.
You know, again, I've lost a lot of friends
in aviation accidents.
I've certainly been in the army for long
periods of time where there were accidents
and you could just see that there was some

(01:27:59):
level of interest.
You know kind of, but even sometimes family
members kind of wouldn't have known that it
happened.
You know and this is coming from somebody
that's a Blackhawk pilot, and so sometimes
you might get a text hey, was this you, um?
But then a day or two everybody's kind of
forgotten about it, um and again.
Even sometimes my own family members would
be like oh, I didn't know that there was a
Blackhawk crash, you know, but um.
So in this one it's unique because there's

(01:28:20):
also 64 other people involved, um, who were
killed, and so that just really turned up
the level of scrutiny.
Number one, because the amount of civilians
when you have a military and this isn't
totally unprecedented.
I think there's been four to six incidents
where there's been mid-air collisions with
military aircraft and civilian aircraft.
It's just been a long time, and so, because
commercial aviation has become so safe,

(01:28:42):
everybody's particularly interested in this.
Because it's a military aircraft, it's a
civilian aircraft, everybody's particularly
interested and because 64 innocent people
died.
Yeah, because 60, I mean I would say 67
innocent people died.
It was just, you know, a difficult
circumstance, and so the level of scrutiny
and the level of visibility in national

(01:29:03):
media was turned so high up.
And again, because of kind of the things
that drove me onto this show and onto other
shows and started speaking out out where it
was like, oh, this incompetent crew or some
of the um, you know, even stuff like, oh,
you know, becca low box, why would they
pull her social media off?
And I'm like, well, I could see where my
family would pull my social media off,

(01:29:23):
there's something on there.
But like, why give anybody fodder?
Um, you know, and making comments about,
you know, her serving as a White House
social aid, which was did not take her away
from her job duties, did not make her a
worse pilot.
Or about her, specifically Becca Lobach's,
the time that it took her to make pilot
command, which was actually a pretty normal

(01:29:44):
amount of time that it took to make pilot
command.
And so there were all these like kind of
arrows being shot at all the crew members,
um, and again, because there was a
simplistic take, which is they're off an
altitude, everybody died.
Um, that I think was was wrong.
Not necessarily at that, but for patients
not important.
But there's a lot of more Um, and so they
were just watching all these kind of uh

(01:30:05):
arrows being shot at their, at their dead
friends, um, and so morale was pretty bad.
You know, I was quoted an article and my
brother read it, and then he read the
online comments and texted me back right
away and said if you haven't read the
online comments, don't.
And I said well, what are people saying?

(01:30:26):
And he goes.
I've never seen people.
I've never seen people say the kinds of
things they're saying about the military
right now or about military members.

Lara (01:30:36):
That must have been the New York Times
article.

Austin (01:30:40):
A number of.
I don't think it's unusual because there's
other media that I've looked at and I have
looked at the comments on so New York Times.
I don't think they're unique in terms of
the kind of vitriol the public was putting
out.

Lara (01:30:50):
What were you quoted as saying?

Austin (01:30:52):
Not, I think it was.
I honestly don't, I don't remember.
It was again just specifically about the
routes or something like that.
I think it was about the risk, just general
risk.

Lara (01:31:00):
Right.

Austin (01:31:01):
But he wasn't talking about my comments
specifically.
He was just saying the comments from the
public on the article.
Because the article was about a bunch of
other stuff as well and I saw comments out
there about some of the stuff.
Just like everybody knows what happened.
These people weren't competent, they killed
everybody.
That kind of attitude that was out there
and that stuff was getting back to the unit
and getting back to their friends and,

(01:31:23):
worse than that, family.
You know people in the military were tough,
we can take it, you can tell, because they
all kept their mouth shut because that's
what good soldiers do they just let it roll
off their back and they deal with the blows.
But worse than that is the family members
who I think are still hearing stuff like

(01:31:44):
that and are still aware of it.
And it's particularly painful for them.

Lara (01:31:49):
Well, I need to let you go because you have
a flight to catch and I know it was
important to you to make sure that
everybody knows that you're not speaking on
behalf of the DOD or any airline or company
or anything else, these are your personal.
This is your personal choice and these are
your personal views, based on you know what
you feel in your heart.

Austin (01:32:10):
Thank, you yes.

Lara (01:32:11):
And that you wanted to speak up for people
who are not necessarily in a position to
speak for themselves.
That's right.
I mean, I learned a lot from you.
I'm sure a lot of other people will, and I
just thank you.
I just want to say thank you.

Austin (01:32:25):
Thank you for extending the invitation and
for having me.

Lara (01:32:27):
Well, and you came all the way out here and
that's important because you know I mean
right or wrong, and maybe you'll be right
about everything.
The investigation will come out and back
you up and maybe there'll be other things
we don't know about right.
That can still come out.
But, either way, having people with
knowledge and experience add their voices

(01:32:48):
to the debate, because you know that public
square is here to stay and it does a lot of
good.

Austin (01:32:54):
Yeah, I hope so.

Lara (01:32:54):
But the way you mitigate any of the
downsides is for people who know to speak
up.
So it's great to meet you, Austin.
I really appreciate it.

Austin (01:33:03):
Thank you very much for having me.

Lara (01:33:04):
Dare I say fly safely on your way home,
yeah thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Okay, so thank you for watching Going Rogue
with Laura Logan on your way home.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Okay, so thank you for watching Going Rogue
with Laura Logan.
I think I'm supposed to say something about
where you can go at this point,
lauralogancom.
Look on the website.
I'm the worst salesperson in the world, but
I do appreciate your support.

(01:33:26):
Take care.