Thursday will mark one year since the deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport, and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is expected to issue its final report on the probable cause of the crash next week.
News4 got a behind the scenes look at the technical work that goes into solving tough transportation incidents like the crash.
“Sometimes you have to be able to sort of look at the wreckage, sort of like unfolded in your mind,” said Mike Budinski with the NTSB Research Engineering Department. “Try to figure out, like, what was up, what was down, what’s front, what’s back.”
When you hear about a black box being analyzed or flight data being retrieved, it happens at the NTSB lab at L’Enfant Plaza. It’s a busy place with requests for answers coming from all across the globe.
“We, by and large, do more than anywhere else in the world,” said Sean Payne with the NTSB.
Black Boxes are also taken apart there. They’re built to withstand huge force, over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and 20,000 pounds of sea pressure. Inside the details are often kept, some of them revealing difficult moments of crashes.
“It’s challenging,” one staffer said. “There are some that still stick with me.”
“The focus then is what happened and how do we prevent it,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “That puts everybody on a very objective fact-based, we are focusing on the evidence to drive us to the conclusions and how you would prevent that from happening.”
Homendy said one of the most difficult modern-day challenges is figuring out what’s real and what’s not when online videos are posted after incidents.
“I can think of, if you remember the Kobe Bryant in Calabasas, there was a helicopter crash that was replayed over social media over and over again, and it actually wasn’t even that accident at all,” she said.
One investigator said only the hardest of the hard cases come through their doors.
The NTSB couldn’t talk specifically about the Reagan National midair collision because their report isn’t finalized yet, but those details will be released soon. Nevertheless, these crews say they’re committed to zooming in as close as needed to find the answers.
The NTSB will hold a final hearing on the deadly midair collision next Tuesday.
