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NTSB: Systemic failures led to midair crash

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board says "systemic failures" are to blame for the 2025 deadly midair crash between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jet near the nation's capital. CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave has the details.
Jan 27 (04:48)

TRANSCRIPT FOR: “"SYSTEMIC FAILURES" LED TO 2025 DEADLY MIDAIR CRASH NEAR WASHINGTON, D.C., NTSB CHAIR SAYS”

LINDSEY:
00:03:47

And Chris, you've been following this so closely, and through your sourcing and your great reporting, you have already divulged a lot of the information that we're hearing from this report. Did anything surprise you? You know what? We saw something today we hadn't seen before. The NTSB put together an animation that essentially puts you in the flight deck of the airplane and the helicopter. You get a sense for what the helicopter pilots could see with their night vision goggles. You know, they're looking through basically something like this, where you're trying to look through, basically, a circle, a portion of what you would see otherwise. And from the flight deck, what the pilot who was monitoring, the co-pilot, would be able to see, you could barely see the helicopter approaching this airplane until it was right on top of the airplane. And it's clear from this animation why investigators believe the pilots of the helicopter never saw the airplane. Seeing that in real time was chilling.

LINDSEY:
00:04:46

All right, Kris Van Cleave, thank you so much.

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