Peter Goelz: It’s a little early to speculate, but very clearly, one of the aircraft was not in the positon that it was supposed to be. The commercial aircraft, the PSA regional jet, appeared to be lined up appropriately and a close final, which means that it was less than 500 feet from the runway. The Black Hawk appeared to be perhaps out of his scheduled flight path. And the attention is going to be on where the Black Hawk was and why. And it’ll take some time to figure that out.
Ciaran Jenkins: And in that situation, you’ve got two aircraft who are on a collision course. Which one, when you’ve got a military and a civil aircraft, is obliged to change course ordinarily?
Peter Goelz: Under this circumstance, the responsibility rested with the Black Hawk. The commercial aircraft was, I say, a close final. The pilot, his sole responsibility, the flying pilot, was to keep his eye on the runway and to land the plane successfully. His co-pilot, his non-flying pilot, was responsible for operating the flaps, other equipment on the aircraft and communicating. They were focussed on getting the plane down safely. The Black Hawk, which was in a routine flight, its responsibility was to see and avoid the aircraft, the commercial aircraft.
Ciaran Jenkins: Now, in the footage, you see a third aircraft. Now, what impact could that have had, if any at all?
Peter Goelz: We don’t know. And unfortunately, the Black Hawk will not have a voice recorder inside the cockpit. In the commercial aircraft, you have a voice recorder that records sounds and discussions in the cockpit and the data recorder, which records what the aircraft is doing. My guess is the voice recorder in the commercial aircraft will simply record very sudden decompression and explosion. We don’t know.
Ciaran Jenkins: There are some, aren’t there Peter, there are some very, very advanced systems in passenger planes to try and prevent this sort of horrendous crash. Would they have been effective during landing?
Peter Goelz: Yes, you have what’s known as the TCAS, which is the collision avoidance system. But that is only effective above 1,000 feet. It’s designed to keep aircraft in cruise altitude or climbing to cruise altitude out of conflict. Once it gets below 1,000 feet, TCAS begins to transition to a different system which prevents on the ground collision. The plane was at about 500 feet. That system was not in play.
Ciaran Jenkins: And, Peter, you have a long history investigating these sorts of incidents. I mean, President Trump called a press conference this afternoon in which he speculated about the cause of this crash. He suggested it could have been diversity hiring. What do you make of that?
Peter Goelz: Appalling. The idea that the president would start to speculate completely in an unfounded basis was simply appalling. The American safety system, which is considered the gold standard worldwide, was built on independent, unbiased investigations over 40 or 50 years. He’s started to dismantle that in 50 minutes.