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Retired US Army colonel shares his thoughts on tragic DC crash and what he believes may have gone wrong

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WASHINGTON D.C. (KTVZ) -- With more than 1,400 hours of flying Black Hawk helicopters for the U.S. Army, retired Colonel David Shaw believes a miscommunication between those in the helicopter and air traffic control may be the cause behind Wednesday's tragic crash into the Potomac River.

In an interview Thursday with a former college friend, KTVZ Chief Meteorologist John Carroll, the retired colonel emphasized just how busy the DCA (Reagan International) Airport is, especially as it's surrounded by several military air bases.

"You've got the air base. You have all the flag officers that typically fly in and out of Andrews Air Force Base. You have the Marine base that's even farther south. It's very common to see helicopters flying all over the place," Shaw said.

While he does have many questions investigators will be working to answer, Shaws says the flight paths were not unusual, even with how busy the airport was.

"It wouldn't be uncommon to fly through congested areas at night, if you wanted to get from point A to point B in the shortest direction, which is down the river," he said.

Shaw believes a miscommunication between the Black Hawk helicopter and the control tower might have been the key issue.

"This is just complete speculation. When the tower asked the (Black Hawk helicopter crew) 'Do you have the aircraft in sight?' My assumption was that he was looking at the aircraft that was taking off to the south, when in fact what the tower was talking about, 'Do you have (the plane) landing to the north?' which is abnormal, in my opinion."

As far as what happened to those onboard both aircraft, Shaw says he believes they likely were killed upon impact or when they hit the water: "If they didn't die immediately, they died when they hit the water, which would have felt like hitting cement at 200 miles an hour."

Article Topic Follows: Accidents and Crashes

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John Carroll

John Carroll is KTVZ News’ chief meteorologist. Learn more about John here.

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