JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Just over a week has passed since the tragic DC air collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight that claimed the lives of 67 people, and the investigation into the crash is still ongoing.
“It’s a tragedy and a lot of things can be done to learn from it and make aviation safer,” said Nick Breeze, who said he had a near-air collision with a law enforcement helicopter in 2022 while flying near Tallahassee.
Recommended Videos
RELATED | Remains of all 67 victims of the midair collision near DC recovered as NTSB probes altitude data
The FAA sent findings to Breeze, noting that the police helicopter’s ADS-B was not transmitting a signal.
Using FlightRadar24, anyone can track commercial, private and some military flights in the country thanks to ADS-B technology. However, aviation experts told News4JAX it is not required or used by all military aircraft.
“I had a cleared flight path,” Breeze stated. “But I think that information would have been available to the air traffic controllers. They would have been able to see that and deconflict for me.”
Aviation pilot and lawyer Ed Booth, with 30 years of experience, explained ADS-B in layman’s terms.
“Air traffic control from the 40s to the end of the last century relied exclusively on radar to determine where airplanes were. The next-gen system relies on the airplanes to continuously broadcast their position using the ADS-B transmitter,” he said.
Booth demonstrated extensive data provided by ADS-B on one of his personal flights. Similar to what the American Airlines flight would have been transmitting. Since 2020, all planes have been retrofitted to do so with exceptions in some air spaces.
“This system is going to know about him, and if you get too close to him, all these automated warnings go off,” Booth explained.
However, he said not all military aircraft are required to transmit ADS-B signals, though Booth noted, “a lot of them do, and that rule may change.”
MORE | Salvage crews recover engine, large portion of jet from river after deadly air collision near DC
Right now, it is not clear what caused the collision. Booth believes that a single point of failure should not cause a crash and maintains that aviation is one of the safest forms of travel.
Breeze hopes his experience will contribute to industry improvements.
“It is a system that works,” he said.