«Shock, shock, shock. It is an alert three »: the audios of the air controllers before and after the accident

The audio of the air traffic control tower recorded the communications maintained before and after the clash between the passenger plane of American Airlines and the Black Hawk helicopter of the army on Wednesday night.

The audio of Liveatc.net, a reliable source of flight recordings, captured the final communications between the three members of the crew of the helicopter (PAT25 call indicative) before it collided with the CRJ700 plane Bombardier that transported 64 passengers and crew.

«Pat25, do you have a CRJ in view? Pat25, passes behind the CRJ, ”says an air controller at 8:47 p.m. on Wednesday (01:47 GMT on Thursday).

Seconds later, another plane calls air traffic control and says: “Torre, did you see that?” – Apparently referring to the accident. Subsequently, an air traffic controller redirected the airplanes that were heading to track 33 of the Reagan National Airport of Washington to turn around.

“Shock, shock, shock, this is an alert three”you can listen to one of the air controllers say in the audio at approximately at the time of the accident. “I don’t know if they realized before what happened, but there was a collision in the approach to 33. We are going to close the operations indefinitely,” says another controller.

“Both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river,” he heard to say to a third aerial controller. “I was probably in the middle of the river,” says the controller. «I just saw a fireball and then disappeared. I have not seen anything since they hit the river. But It was a crj and a helicopter who impacted«.

The accident was captured by a webcam at the John F. Kennedy center for the performing arts in Washington. The clip shows the plane exploding on fire and falling to the ground after being beaten by the helicopter.