Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who safely ditched an airliner in the Hudson River 15 years ago, says nighttime flying over water could be a contributing factor in the fatal collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night.
“There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night,” he said, speaking to the New York Times, which “might have made it a little bit harder to see.
“But that’s supposition. We don’t know,” he said.
“Everything is harder at night,” he said, particularly when it comes to identifying other aircraft, because, “basically all you can do is see the lights on them.”
“You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed?” he said.
Sully also cited old technology at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which American Eagle Flight 5342 was heading for when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and was sent crashing into the Potomac River, a few miles from downtown Washington.
The airport, which requires additional training for pilots, has a large number of flights and short runways, according to Sullenberger, creating a challenging approach for pilots landing at the airport, which was built in the 1930s.
“It hasn’t changed much since then,” he said, adding, “Of course, we’ve added technology to it. But a lot of the technology is old.”
Sullenberger became famous after a bird strike knocked out the engines of his Airbus A320 after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport in January 2009. Realizing he could not safely make it to any available airport, he coolly landed the plane on the Hudson River, with all 155 people aboard rescued by boat.
Sullenberger went on to become an outspoken air safety campaigner and briefly served as U.S. ambassador to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The retired pilot, 74, said he is “devastated” by the Potomac collision, and that the aviation industry has an “obligation to learn from every failure and improve.”
The two aircraft were carrying a combined 67 people, and so far authorities have not confirmed whether any have survived.
It is the first fatal accident in the U.S. involving a commercial airline for almost 16 years.
Sullenberger said aviation is in an “exceptionally safe” moment, but that the crash showed “how vigilant we have to be” when it comes to investigating the causes of accidents and taking steps to prevent them.
“We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accidents,” he said.
Sullenberger said he hoped that in the Potomac crash, the aircraft’s black boxes, in-flight voice recorders and air-traffic control data would help reveal the reason why the two aircraft collided.
