5/23 - excerpts below from interview with the Army in the AP, 2 things of note:
1. Army refers to a 20 second loss of contact between Pentagon and PAT23 due to antenna issue, I am assuming in the above timeline this is referring to the time from 1830.59 to 1831.28, when it seems PAT23 initially contacted the Pentagon at 1830.59, there was a brief response 10s later at 1831.09 (content inaudible on the feed); PAT23 calls again at 1831.27 with more audible response at 1831.28 apparently referring to "have you loud ?and ?clear", which would seem to fit with comms issues.
2. "FAA air traffic controllers at the airport aborted the landing of a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 during the Black Hawk’s initial flight toward the Pentagon because they realized both aircraft would be nearing the Pentagon around the same time" (i.e. unrelated to the comms/landing issue which caused the 2nd go-around for RPA8525); this would fit with the above timeline of a 4 min window between the arrivals with a ~2.5min flight time from Glebe to Pentagon, but it took 80s to leave the hold and get to Glebe. DAL1671 is given go-around at 1831.05 just after PAT23 tries to contact Pentagon for the first time.
In the original audio mix I posted I had edited out some of the initial PAT23/Pentagon radio calls due to the noise, so I'm attaching the original HELI feed in realtime from 1830-1837 with Pentagon transmissions amplified, otherwise unedited. PAT23 calls on Pentagon frequency are the higher pitch static first heard at 59s.
https://apnews.com/article/army-helicopter-airport-collision-airlines-ff0cacada07048c43b55c6c4afeef256Pentagon lost contact with Army helicopter on flight that caused jets to nix landings at DC airport
WASHINGTON (AP) — Military air traffic controllers lost contact with an Army helicopter for about 20 seconds as it neared the Pentagon on the flight that caused two commercial jets to abort their landings this month at a Washington airport, the Army told The Associated Press on Friday. (...)
Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the head of Army aviation, told the AP in an exclusive interview that the controllers lost contact with the Black Hawk because a temporary control tower antenna was not set up in a location where it would be able to maintain contact with the helicopter as it flew low and rounded the Pentagon to land. He said the antenna was set up during construction of a new control tower and has now been moved to the roof of the Pentagon.
Braman said federal air traffic controllers inside the Washington airport also didn’t have a good fix on the location of the helicopter. The Black Hawk was transmitting data that should have given controllers its precise location, but Braman said FAA officials told him in meetings last week that the data the controllers were getting from multiple feeds and sensors was inconclusive, with some of it deviating by as much as three-quarters of a mile.
“It certainly led to confusion of air traffic control of where they were,” Braman said. (...)
The FAA declined to comment on whether its controllers could not get a good fix on the Black Hawk’s location due to their own equipment issues, citing the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. (...)
FAA air traffic controllers at the airport aborted the landing of a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 during the Black Hawk’s initial flight toward the Pentagon because they realized both aircraft would be nearing the Pentagon around the same time, Braman said.
Because of the 20-second loss of contact, the Pentagon’s tower did not clear the Black Hawk to land, so the helicopter circled the Pentagon a second time. That’s when air traffic controllers at the airport decided to abort the landing of a second jet, a Republic Airways Embraer E170, because they did not have a confident fix on the Black Hawk’s location, Braman said.
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