The many questions of the Potomac plane crash

“What a terrible night this has been,” writes President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform. “God bless you all!” Trump also expressed his bafflement as to how a Black Hawk military helicopter, operating out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, managed to collide with American Eagle Flight 5342, a commercial passenger plane carrying 64 passengers, directly over the Potomac river as the aircraft came into land at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. 

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” he said. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”

As a superstitious man, someone who believes God saved him from a bullet in order to make America great again, Trump will be trying to decipher the greater meaning behind this horrible tragedy, coming as it does just ten days into his presidency. 

For now, the disaster has stunned the public. But it won’t be long before a public figure tries to blame the new administration’s militaristic streak for the disaster — or portrays the crash as a metaphor for the chaotic reality of Trump 2.0. Online theorists are already convinced the collision was no accident. 

It does seem an incredible security failure. The skies over Washington are always very busy: commercial, military, police and presidential aircraft constantly clatter around above the nation’s capital. Yet quite how a military-trained pilot, alerted to the presence of a commercial plane by the control tower, could still have smashed into it is a mystery. In an audio recording, the control tower can be heard asking if the Black Hawk had the plane “in sight,” then told the helicopter to “pass behind.” Was the message received? Did the pilot somehow not think of his helicopter’s bladespan? Was he distracted by the complexity of some training exercise? Was his vision impeded somehow?

Such matters will be investigated in the coming days. The most pertinent question: is it sensible for war machines to be allowed to fly so close and so often to passenger flights landing at one of America’s busier airports? For now, however, the grim task of pulling the bodies out of the Potomac river goes on.