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the tcas, as you mentioned, that's that safety system on board. tcas, yes. to the left or right." do something about it, it tells you what to do. climb or descend. on the helicopter turned on? was it functioning? you know, this was a training flight. perhaps it was a covert—style training flight. i don't know. is at fault here. the commercialflight, the american airlines flight was doing everything correctly. and, you know, if the other aircraft hasn't got its transponder turned on and its tcas turned studio: lights just studio: lightsjust to those live pictures of the scene, there is a flight is crashed into a river in washington, dc after it collided in midair without us army a lib army helicopter. a reacué " " " under way lib". army heticopter. a reztué " ” " under way in operation under way in dc. this arlington, washington, dc. this arlington. very close to all the virginia, very close to all the buildings in the capitol. 301st responders, we understand, buildings in the capitol. 301st respo torrs, we understand, are .. buildings in the capitol. 301st respo to dealre understa

uh, the tcas shares a little box with what's called the, um, the transponder and the tcas itself is a traffic collision avoidance system. so it has a ta and an ra. the ta is the traffic advisory. so it's going to put up information on the navigation displays to tell the pilots where the airplanes are in the local area. now, um, the targets are changing their positions on this screen. these targets are also showing their elevation, their changes in elevation as well. so it's very helpful to be able to see that. and as the targets move closer to your target, and in our case, we have a white triangle on the navigation display, you probably can't see this very well. the targets will change color, and then the system will call out traffic. traffic. if you're not really alert or you haven't noticed it yet, traffic, traffic. and we're already ahead of that for sure. so that's the advisory section of that. the the resolution. um, the ra resolution is where when that aircraft, that threat becomes too close to our aircraft, i will actually get indications on my primary flight display and it wil

. >> so you've mentioned how there is a system called tcas. it's a traffic collision and avoidance system, but it shows or it indicates different things to the pilots depending on the altitude. this was a very low altitude that these these aircraft were flying at. what would they have seen and heard at this altitude of the crash? >> abby, the the tcas system is very useful above 1000ft or 1500 feet, but not very useful at low altitudes, because functions of the system are disabled. you don't want to be giving commands to a pilot to alter course or altitude when they're only 500ft above the ground. so the tcas system is not helpful to you at 400ft, where this collision occurred. the functions have been disabled, and there's a reason for that. so that's just not helpful. you can't expect tcas to solve all your problems, especially when pilots are in situations they're not supposed to be in. and i can elaborate upon that if you wish me to do so. >> well. >> tell us about one of the aspects. this is another important aspect of information that we

>> abby, the the tcas system is very useful. above 1000ft or 1500ft, but not very useful at low altitudes, because functions of the system are disabled. you don't want to be giving commands to a pilot to alter course or altitude when they're only 500ft above the ground, so the tcas system is not helpful to you at 400ft where this collision occurred. the functions have been disabled, and there's a reason for that. so that's just not helpful. you can't expect tcas to solve all of your problems, especially when the pilots are in situations they're not supposed to be in. and i can elaborate upon that if you wish me to do so. >> well. >> tell us about one of the aspects. this is another important aspect of information that we just learned about today. a source told cnn that at the time of this crash, one of the controllers in the air traffic control tower was operating two different positions. both the local and the helicopter traffic. that is, according to what we've heard, not uncommon. but i'm wondering, in this scenario where you

so tcas was probably not in play last night. people, uh, in the cockpit, the flight crew seeing a void and rely on the controller. >> peter goelz, thank you very much. standby. sarah. >> all right. we do have a team of reporters on this breaking news story. rene marsh, who has been on the scene, has just left that scene because it's now part of the crime scene. arlette saenz and alayna treene are also with us. i want to start with you, rene. you have been on the phone with the ntsb. what are you hearing from the ntsb at the moment? >> so a lot of moving pieces. clearly lots of agencies involved in this investigation. so a lot of coordination is necessary. but their primary concern right now is that they do not in any way want to impede on the search and recovery mission. so they are being very careful before they go all in on their investigative work not to get in the way for the recovery of these bodies. we heard in that press conference, 27 bodies have already been recovered from the commercial regional jet and one from the bl

has something on board called tcas. traffic collision avoidance system. tcas tells the pilots when there is an impending collision with another airplane, or in this case, a helicopter, providing an aural warning for the pilots, saying climb, climb, now, descend, descend. now, even in that tone of voice, to make sure that the pilots get the pure urgency of the situation unfolding in front of them. this is an incredible response by search and rescue crews in the potomac river. this is a moonless night in the nation's capital. they're incredibly hampered by the cold temperatures, the water temperature right now, according to our weather team. and i want to pull this up again today. it was about 50 degrees out air temperature wise, but the potomac river, about 35 degrees, meaning hypothermia can set in in a matter of minutes. it is a race against the clock. this is a real life drama taking place right now, just outside of the nation's capital on the potomac river, at one of the busiest runways in the country. runway one at reagan national airport. that's what

one of the questions here is with that tcas system. what we know from robert sumwalt, a cbs news transportation safety analyst and a former chair of the ntsb, he says that this is a system that will not give off that auditory warning below 500 feet. the question here is whether that might have played a role in maybe not get something sort of notification within the cockpit of the jet. >> every day reagan air traffic controllers talk with both military and commercial aircraft. can you talk about how that communication works? >> yeah. as you mentioned, this is something that happens on a regular basis, consistently trying to make sure that the traffic flow is as smooth as possible. they're accustomed to dealing with military aircraft as well as commercial because of the type of region that we're talking about in the d.c. area. one of the things with this is that they typically work on different frequencies. the military aircraft and the commercial aircraft. the question here, though, is obviously what went wrong, something obviously did

the tcas system is inhibited below 1500ft of above ground level. and that's for one simple reason. the tcas system is going to give a nose up or a nose down command if it has a resolution advisory that an aircraft is on a collision course, well, you don't want to be on an approach and suddenly have an advisory to drop your nose to avoid a collision. so it's inhibited. it's just it's just cuts out at 1500 feet and at 1000ft. no, there's nothing there's nothing coming through. so the pilots themselves, though, on landing the aircraft, that's a difficult airport, the same as laguardia. it's almost like to me coming aboard a carrier when i was flying into reagan. and so the pilots are focused on your rate of descent, your airspeed, and your target of where you're going to land on that short runway. so there's no games to be played. both pilots would be out of the cockpit, staring out and focused on that. the likelihood that they would see a helicopter approaching from whatever quadrant he came from is not very likely, and probably from what i saw of the explosive effect of the both air

since thatetime, an instrument tcas has been installed every commercial z— z: 7 to aid in the of midai is still very lysinot perfect,-but it is still very safe. tsinot erfect -but' ' ' m——~, tsinot erfect -but' ' ' very, very safe. now, as we've 'ust very, very safe. now, as we've just been — very, very safe. now, as we've just been hearing, _ very, very safe. now, as we've just been hearing, we - just been hearing, we understand that the ntsb has recovered the black boxes. without speculating, what may have wrong? what would have gone wrong? what would your expert opinion suggest has gone wrong here? iline your expert opinion suggest has gone wrong here?— gone wrong here? icseces auoin to be zz-e: six: j: i: 7 closely7at is77 the 7 closely7fact77ors. the pilots said that heiieeeter eiietsisaia'that had the other aircraft in they had the other aircraft in under once sight. under regulation, once you see another aircraft and advise the controllers, the responsibility to see and avoid advise the controllers, the res; other .ity to see and avoid advise the controllers, the res; other airc

the problem we're going to hear about tonight's accident is the fact that the tcas is inhibited belowso it will not give a warning. rice said the aviation world learns from these rare catastrophes to make flying safer. he expects pilots, air traffic controllers and others to learn a lesson here in time. raj. yeah, and just the traffic of that airport. we can relate to our local airports as well. thank you. chris. let's take a live look now at the scene in washington, d.c. you can see the amount that's just a small amount of the first responders, more than 300 of them at this hour. and again, it's past 2 a.m. therere in d.c. they will continue for several hours. the temperature outside the air temperature. jeff is with us, i believe, 43 degrees. the river temperature. jeff. much colder than that, which really complicates the efforts here. yeah, right near freezing. and i wanted to take a look back at the satellite radar picture so you can see what the conditions were at the time of the plane crash this evening. and what you'll see here is there was no clouds, no rain, no snow. in fact,

the tcas system.'ll try to i'll try to break it down into its you know, it's basically as i can as quickly as. >> you can. >> sorry, sorry. go ahead. at traffic advisory. the resolution advisory will tell me to climb. climb now. it will tell the other craft to descend. descend now. this is independent of air traffic control. in this search, in this circumstance, the the tcas systems would be giving information. but air traffic control is taking priority and giving both aircraft permission to continue because they see each other and they are going safely around each other. >> okay. aaron murphy, thank you so much. i learned so much from talking with you, and i hope our viewers did as well. thank you. i'll be right back. >> i'm not happy to share and feel sorry. >> thank you this part changed my life. >> superman. crazy. just that simple little thing over the horse. >> chris wanted to change the world. >> people are literally. >> walking because. >> of him. >> superman. the christopher reeve story sunda

, and that tcas system from, you know, a further distance than close by and closely being proximate, starts giving the airplane pilots notice of that proximate aircraft. so they should have been getting increasing levels of alerts and warnings, assuming that system was on and it's required to be on. so that will be another thing i would expect the ntsb will be looking at, you know, looking to make sure the transponder and the ads-b was working and that the tcas was working and will be able to listen to the cockpit voice recorder to hear were some of those aural alerts sounding. and then we'll know. we should know whether there were also visual alerts on the display. but if they had their setting to ra, which is resolution advisory at the very end prior to impact and in a timely amount of time prior to impact, they should have gotten a command to steer away from the helicopter. and that would be both a an aural command and there would be a visual on their artificial horizon which shows the direction of sky and ground of where they should avoid flying in their maneuver. >> all right, g

commercial flights are equipped, uh, for ages with a system called tcas.raffic collision avoidance system. it tells the pilots in the cockpit how to avoid other airplanes nearby. it is a system that came about because of mid-air collisions with commercial airliners and small general aviation aircraft, commercial airliners and helicopters, it tells the pilots, there's traffic ahead of you. climb, climb, now descend, descend now, um, this would be an incredible lining up of the holes in the swiss cheese, the which is the saying in aviation, the gaps in the in the safety chain in aviation, uh, that this happened and now investigators have an incredible amount of work cut out for them to figure out how a commercial airliner in the united states in 2025, when the pilots are incredibly trained, the technology is is incredibly sharp, collided with what is apparently a military or government helicopter. nobody else uses the black hawk. yeah, it is. it is really something else. i, i i'm just stunned. initially we had heard that this may have been a collision with t

the other thing is that you can over rely on the tcas system, the, the traffic control that allows youto know whether there's an aircraft coming at you or not, so that air traffic control system, the tcas, will warn you if there's aircraft coming approaching at you. the faulty part of that is the fact that if that aircraft isn't approaching you, it only looks forward. so if the helicopter, if this airplane was coming to the north and turning left and or excuse me if the airplane was doing that and the helicopters coming the opposite way, if it's to the side of the the airplane, which it appears to me that that is what happened, the tcas would not have given a warning to the pilot. so that's two of the vulnerabilities. the other vulnerability that in flight. and when i was based in washington, dc and the faa headquarters for many years, and i would fly mostly at night doing surveillance, i sit in the cockpit in the jump seat and watch these flights go in and out, watch the pilots, how they act. that was part of my job as a safety inspector. so literally hundreds of flights in and out of

tcas.hich gives resolution advisories at altitude, just like if two pilots or two airplanes are pointing at each other at altitude, the systems will coordinate the evasive maneuver and tell one airplane to fly up and one to fly down. and that. >> function is. >> inhibited close into the airport, because there's so much traffic that you would start to get a lot of false warnings, and there's a risk involved in airlines. doing airliners. doing evasive maneuvers very, very close to the ground. so that that tcas system. >> would have. >> been inhibited, but it would still provide the traffic advisory. and so it would advise where the other traffic is and the military aircraft. i'm not sure what equipment it would have, but it would certainly have the transponder and everything. and it would probably not have the tcas system. but again, that's inhibited close. >> to the. >> ground. >> anthony. it's amazing to have this data point from steven that it. >> has been since. >> 1978 that the country h

the problem we're going to hear about tonight's accident is the fact that the tcas is inhibited below 700ft, so it will not give a warning. chris chmura. today in the bay, there are many rapid developments on this unfolding search and investigation. this morning, as we get updates, we'll give them to you. stay with us for the very latest. you can also stay up to date by downloading our app. it's free and available on all smart devices. we are also following breaking news out of the middle east. hamas is releasing more hostages that were kidnaped during the october 7th attacks on israel. today in the bay's bob redell joins us live this morning and bob, israel's prime minister, there, condemning the way in which some of those hostages have been released. you are correct. good morning to you, marcus. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu has condemned the, quote, shocking scenes during the release of these hostages, including that of agam berger. she is a 20 year old israeli soldier who was paraded in front of a large group of people, including hamas militants, on the in the gaza str

you would also typically have something called tcas, a collision avoidance system on the airliner. however, about 1,000 feet that system doesn't alarm based on the way the aircraft appear to have lined up, it's likely the pilots of the airliner never saw that helicopter coming. a plane is not like your car. you can't look out the side view or rear view mirror. you can't look over your shoulder and see behind you. you have a limited field of view. you've got the windows. you can sort of see left and sort of see right, but you can't see necessarily behind you and just a few hundred feet above the ground those pilots' focus would be on the runway ahead of them and getting the airplane down safely. this is an arrival pattern. so there are other airplanes behind the one that they ultimately collided with. these accidents are a bit like a chain link. several events come together in order for this accident to happen. if any one of them doesn't occur, the accident doesn't occur. for now, certainly one of the things investigators are going to look to understand, why was the helicopter opera

the airplane a required system called the traffic collision avoidance system commonly referred to as tcas, that system from a much greater distance out starts enunciating and displaying or initially displaying and eventually enunciating the presence of an aircraft within the vicinity of their airplane and so it would start out on the display as a white symbol. then it becomes a yellow symbol, a red symbol and eventually assuming that the airplane had their resolution advisory turned on -- and that's something the ntsb will be looking for, whether that was turned on -- they also would have gotten an oral command or should have gotten an oral command as to what they should do. so in this case, for example, climb if that's what they should have done and on their artificial horizon in the airplane it also would have put a black box around where the airplane should not go. crews are trained to respond to these kinds of alerts and warnings regularly. >> talking about personnel, i know there's been a lot of questions about staffing in the control tower. how much do you think that could have play

that's where i think investigators will be looking, because tcas should have prevented this accident happening. >> it will be an interesting aspect to look into. of course, we're far from that right now, but obviously a lot of questions for those watching from the outside on how this could have happened. and then at the central point of this, a lot of families trying to at this point, really hope for a miracle that their loved ones are, are, will be pulled out of frigid waters. what is now hours after the point of impact. um, jeffrey thomas, really appreciate your time and perspective. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> and we just have this update newly into cnn, u.s. figure skating is confirming several members of its skating community were on board. american airlines flight 5342. the group says athletes, coaches and families were returning from the national development camp in wichita, kansas. a statement says we are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims families closely in our hearts. i want to bring in tony stanton. he's a pilot, a flight examiner and

we've got tcas resolution, conflict advisory, resolution advisory.the levels of safety intervention are immense and each are layered and tiered. so but for for something like this to happen where, you know, like i said, it's a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance i mean a helicopter that flies at about 60 to 80 knots and a descending landing aircraft which touches down at 120 knots. you know, the speeds typical speeds are like, you know, are at least 300 knots separate when one aircraft cruises at nearly 300 knots and the other one does 100 2030 knots. it's it's impossible for this to happen. and and i think clearly, um, something has gone i mean, you know, there's just like i said, i don't want to speculate. you know, the guys on the helicopter are no more. they've lost the crew. uh, everybody out there are mourning the loss of a family member, a friend, a colleague. and i think we should not speculate. the best thing we can do is push and urge for that investigation to take place. and, um. and it should be a fair, balanced investigation because we have a

>> tcas, the traffic collision avoidance system is not super reliable at a very low altitude, but it came about because of incidents like this, an airliner versus a small airplane back in san diego decades ago. and so the rules in aviation are often written in blood, and pilots get an aural warning in the cockpit when there is an impending collision. in front of them is a voice that comes through. it says, climb, climb, now, descend, descend. now. the big thing that investigators will want to know is, was that system actually in place? and they will, of course, not only be looking for survivors here, but they will also be looking for the cockpit voice recorder. what was happening in the cockpit of that commercial flight, that psa flight, american airlines flight, but also the flight data recorder, and they will be able to see in the thousands of points of data there, whether or not there was a warning in the cockpit. and frankly, even if they don't have the flight data recorder, they'll be able to hear if there was the aural warning in the cockpit voice recorder, it is going to be so

. >> so, um, the crg, um, flight 5342 would have had tcas.'m not sure about the black hawk aircraft, but, um, one thing that hasn't been talked a lot about is the limitations of the tcas and what happens with the traffic collision and avoidance system. uh, it identifies the height of the aircraft above the ground. and as you're coming into land, it inhibits various warnings that that system would ordinarily give the pilot, as you would expect, coming into land. so at that particular altitude that it seems that these aircraft were at around that 400ft. much of the tcas system is actually inhibited automatically within the system. so by design, that system probably would not have identified to the pilots of 5342 that there was another aircraft in close proximity at that altitude. >> doctor tony staten, fascinating to get your perspective. our thanks to pete muntean as well. still much more to come on this tragic mid-air collision. stay with cnn. we'll be right back. >> this part changed my life. >> superman. crazy. >> just that simple. >> littl

sid: there are systems on board on planes that tell pilots traffic around them, something called tcaswhich alerts pilots to traffic around them. unfortunately, it doesn't work below 1000 feet because of the fact when you are landing, you would have false alarms. this accident may prompt changes in how the systems operate. it may prompt changes in procedures, in terms of how airspace operation works. it is still early days. we are still gathering the facts, waiting to hear from the regulators, and tsp determines the cause of the accident. we are waiting on the findings. but that could be months. caroline: this is a human story. there are a lot of people who are now going to be going to the reagan airport boarding flights. give us the context of what historical resurgence we have seen potentially in accidents, how low accidents remain within aircraft, and ultimately what we have seen prior to this in washington itself involving that particular body of water. sid: aviation incidents are few and far between. this is the first major crash in the u.s. since 2009. incidents have been very ra

on board and it also tcas is inhibited below a given altitude. so the it may not have actually been functioning because of the low altitude of the jet. >> john. >> yeah. >> john. >> walk us through just the. for the layman, the people who fly in day in and day out of these airports. just the choreography, the intense and delicate choreography needed by air traffic control to land all of these airplanes safely. and then also factor in other aircraft, whether it's civilian or military helicopters, small planes in the area. just talk to us about how complicated that is. >> reagan national airport is a complex airport to land at. and it's one i always enjoy flying in and out of there. the quality of the controllers is very high. they move a lot of airplanes in and out of a pretty compact area. you have the river to work with and they will clear you, you know, follow the river up. if you're landing to the north, typically on runway one. and it's very often that they'll say, okay, can you circle to land runway three three? that is also very routine. an

there's a tcas system. >> that. >> provides alerts to pilots. >> and gives resolution. advisories that the pilots can implement. there are automatic collision avoidance systems that will actually maneuver the aircraft in time to be safe when collisions are imminent. there's also the possibility of datalink, which would alleviate the necessity to use voice as the sole means of providing instructions from air traffic control to aircraft. all of these can help us in the future. make sure that information is shared in a more timely fashion, and that reactions are taken swiftly and accurately, so that there's less chance that the error will cause a fatal collision. >> people aren't just sad tonight. they're scared because people all over this country are planning to get on planes in the next few days, should we feel safe? what do you want us to know? >> we should still feel safe. aviation is an extremely safe form of transportation, at least for a while. we're going to be very vigilant. there's going to be a sense that we need to pay attention, whether it's a controller, a p

that means that the tcas system, traffic collision avoidance system on their aircraft worked. it identified the traffic. it showed that there was a conflicting flight path that could have led to a collision. the system worked. they did the right thing. they went around, they came back. rather than try to salvage a bad situation or, you know, be operating in close proximity to that helicopter. >> yeah, just unfortunately did not last night. greg feith, thank you for your expertise. as always, we'll continue to check in with you as this ntsb investigation develops. my next source here tonight is dave hoagland. he is the president of a d.c. firefighters union whose members are on the front lines of these recovery efforts. and it's great to have you here. i know your guys were on the scene within seven minutes of of this collision happening last night. can you just describe what the last 24 hours have been like for them? >> hi, caitlin. thanks. yeah. i just want to start off by saying all the hearts of d.c. firefighters are with the families affected by this terrible tragedy. um,

. >> so let me ask you about tcas. that's the traffic alert avoidance system that planes have it. you think this helicopter most likely had something similar or have it? >> probably not. if it's a tactical aircraft, it probably did not. >> okay, what about the plane then? is this going off? >> it should once again, not being there i don't know as far as the capabilities. also very low to the ground. you may get a lot of extraneous calls as well because you're near other aircraft taking off from the airport. >> so but pilots would also know too, there's a lot of military aircraft going in and around there. that's not uncommon. >> no, it's just a congested airspace. regardless, commercial and military or civilian, there's a lot of things going on in that airspace. and as i said, very narrow corridors because so much restricted airspace around dc. >> so we think what we know about this, this jet was that it was a passenger jet regional. so it has 60 people on board but smaller than than, you know, the larger planes that fly in and out. and now this airport is closed. they're saying n

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we've been talking a lot about the air, their airliners, collision avoidance system known as tcas you know, it has been brought up that once it is below 1000ft, it does not actually work. so we get to a point of see and avoid, and it is not on the pilots who are landing the plane to see and avoid because they are lining up with the runway. it is on that chopper on that helicopter to see and avoid. and so we know that they saw the chopper, the people inside of the black hawk, but we don't know why they didn't avoid. >> yeah, because we know from from the audio, um, there are still so many questions. thank you so much, rene marsh, for bringing us the very latest in the investigation and also learning more about those victims on board the plane, and as well as the three soldiers on that helicopter. joining us now is democratic senator chris van hollen of maryland. he's on a subcommittee covering transportation. senator, first of all, have you been briefed on this crash? what information can you give us? >> well. >> pamela. >> first let me. >> just say my heart. >> goes out to everybody w