An Alternate Reality

If you read my seven (yikes) posts about Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, or ADS-B, thank you for sticking with it. I realize it’s a bit in the weeds. But it’s decades-old technology that, if it had been in use on January 29, 2025, would have saved Christine, Spencer, and 65 other people.

Here’s the specific alternate reality that would have played out that night if ADS-B In, the piece that gives pilots audible alerts and cockpit display of traffic information, had been in use, according to simulations performed by the NTSB.

Fifty-nine seconds — nearly a full minute — before the point of impact between Flight 5342 and the U.S. Army Black Hawk (PAT-25), the Flight 5342 crew would have received a detailed audible alert. They would have heard, “Traffic, 12 o’clock, low, three miles, descending.”

Thirty-five seconds before potential impact, they would have heard a second alert: “Traffic, 12 o’clock, low, two miles.”

In addition to these audible warnings, the crew of Flight 5342 would have had a screen in front of them to reference that displayed the location of nearby aircraft, along with visual indicators of direction, color-coding of possible risks, and call signs to connect with what they were hearing from air traffic control.

When the air traffic controller said, “PAT two five pass behind that C-R-J,” 17 seconds before impact, they would have been able to see at a glance that they were the CRJ in PAT-25’s path.

Meanwhile, the crew of PAT-25 would have received a similarly detailed audible alert 48 seconds before impact: “Traffic, 12 o’clock, 2 nautical miles, 500 feet above.” And they were carrying equipment that could have delivered it.

The problem is that it was not integrated into the crew’s workflow well enough to be valuable. In order for an audible alert to be heard in a noisy Black Hawk cockpit, it must be wired into the communications system in the crew members’ helmets. Had it been, an audible collision alert stating a clock-position of 12 o’clock — dead ahead — would have provided critical information to the crew.

I think any reasonable person would conclude that if both flight crews had the additional situational awareness described above, the midair collision would have been avoided. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy testified to exactly that. As I’ve noted before, when Sen. Ted Cruz asked her at a Feb. 12, 2026, Senate Commerce Committee hearing what the investigation showed would have happened if both aircraft had been equipped with ADS-B In, she stated plainly, “The accident wouldn’t have happened.”

Instead, Flight 5342 was broadcasting ADS-B Out but was not equipped with ADS-B In. Its crew received a more generic audible alert, “Traffic, traffic,” 19 seconds before impact. The NTSB found that they did not detect PAT-25 until about 1 second before impact.

The PAT-25 crew had two iPad minis running ForeFlight, an app that can display ADS-B In traffic, and flight data from one of them showed it was connected to a portable ADS-B receiver during the flight. But it’s unlikely either pilot onboard was looking at them.

The NTSB, in its final report, noted that helicopter crews from PAT-25’s brigade “did not typically monitor their tablets during low-level operations on the DC helicopter routes because the flying task was too demanding.”

This is particularly true when flight crews are wearing night vision goggles, as the PAT-25 crew was on the night of the collision. During the NTSB’s investigative hearing, a former standardization instructor pilot for PAT-25’s brigade, Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Van Vechten, described how light from the iPads could reflect off the windscreen and prevent the pilot from seeing outside. He added that the pilot on the controls usually “would hit the button to turn off the screen so that it’s not blinding you.”

If we want to learn anything from Flight 5342, both civil and military crews need to hear traffic alerts and see the traffic on a screen they actually use.

The standards for this have existed for 12 years. Airlines do much more complicated things all the time. The military does much more complicated things all the time.

The airlines fought it for nearly two decades, and the FAA let them. And the fact that the airlines, the FAA, and the Army still have to be dragged down this path kicking and screaming when 67 people are dead is unconscionable.