Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 12, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba B4 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I WORLD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2025 NTSB urges ban on some helicopter flights at airport where 67 died in midair crash W ASHINGTON — Federal in- vestigators looking into the cause of the January collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people recommended a ban on some helicopter flights Tuesday, saying the current setup “poses an intolerable risk.” National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy laid out frightening statistics about near misses to underscore the danger that has existed for years near Ronald Reagan National Airport and expressed anger that it took a midair collision for it to come to light. In just over three years, she said, there were 85 close calls when a few feet in the wrong direction could have resulted in the same kind of accident that happened Jan. 29 when the military helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River as the plane was approaching the airport. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he’ll adopt the NTSB’s rec- ommendations for the route where the collision occurred. He noted there will be some modifications in the guidelines to be released Wednesday, including al- lowing presidential flights and lifesav- ing missions. Helicopters no longer will be “thread- ing the needle” flying under landing planes, he said. The Federal Aviation Administra- tion also will use artificial intelligence to analyze data from every airport to make sure there aren’t similar dangers elsewhere, he said, adding that there are other airports with cross-traffic. Homendy and Duffy both said the hazards at Reagan airport should have been recognized earlier by the FAA. “The data was there. It wasn’t effect- ively analyzed to see we had this risk,” Duffy said. The NTSB determined that the exist- ing separation distance between planes and helicopters at Reagan airport is “insufficient and poses an intolerable risk to aviation safety,” Homendy said. She said she was devastated for fam- ilies that are grieving because they lost loved ones. Among the victims were 28 members of the figure skating com- munity. “It shouldn’t take tragedy to require immediate action,” she said. Members of several families who lost loved ones said in a statement that the NTSB’s preliminary report showed this was not an isolated incident. “It also reinforces what we, as the families of the victims, already sus- pected: serious, systemic failures in air travel safety cost our loved ones their lives and continues to threaten public safety,” the statement said. Aviation lawyer Robert Clifford, who represents at least six families, said the airline had a responsibility to address known problems. “Those charged in transportation with the highest duty of care can’t run yellow lights, and they’ve been running flashing red lights for years, it sounds like, and it’s just pathetic,” he said. Under current practice helicopters and planes can be as close as 75 feet (23 metres) apart from each other during landing, Homendy said. Investigators have identified 15,000 instances of planes getting alerts about helicopters being in close proximity between Octo- ber 2021 and December 2024, she said. Investigators determined that planes got serious alerts to take evasive action because they were too close to a heli- copter at least once a month between October 2011 and December 2024, Homendy said. In over half those in- stances, the helicopter may have been above its established altitude restric- tion for the route. Safety advocate Mary Schiavo, a former Inspector General of the U.S. Transportation Department, called it a “shocking dereliction of duty” for the FAA to have failed to act on data the NTSB gathered in just a few weeks since the crash. She noted that the FAA had pledged to warn pilots about places with higher collision risk. “They were going to really be pro- active to warn pilots about these hot- spots. I mean, this is beyond a hotspot,” Schiavo said. “This is absolutely radioactive, to have 15,214 close proximity events in three years, it’s unbelievable.” Following the collision, the FAA took steps to restrict helicopter flights around the airport to ensure that planes and helicopters are no longer sharing the same airspace. Now flights are put on hold temporarily when helicopters need to pass by. The NTSB’s proposal would close a vital route for law enforcement, Coast Guard patrols and government oper- ations flights at times, but only when the runways in question are in use, and they account for only about 5% of flights at Reagan. Homendy said the NTSB is recom- mending that the FAA find a “perma- nent solution” for alternate routes far- ther away for helicopter traffic. Investigators have said the helicopter may have had inaccurate altitude read- ings in the moments before the crash, and the crew may not have heard key instructions from air traffic control- lers. The radio altitude of the helicopter was 278 feet (85 metres), which would put it above its 200-foot (61-metre) limit for the location. The helicopter pilots may have also missed part of another communication, when the tower said the jet was turning toward a different runway, Homendy said last month. And the crew was wearing night-vision goggles that would have limited their peripheral vision. The Black Hawk crew was made up of an instructor pilot with 968 hours of flight experience, a pilot with about 450 and a crew chief with nearly 1,150. Army officials have said the crew was familiar with the crowded skies around Washington. The NTSB in its ongoing investiga- tion will look at the amount of traffic at Reagan and the staffing in the control tower to determine if either of those factors played a role. It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB re- port. — The Associated Press JOSH FUNK, JOHN SEEWER AND NATHAN ELLGREN Current setup ‘poses an intolerable risk’, U.S. federal investigators say JACQUELYN MARTIN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says he’ll adopt the NTSB’s recommendations for the route where the midair collision occurred. Explorers discover wreckage of cargo ship that sank in Lake Superior storm more than 130 years ago MADISON, Wis. — Twenty years be- fore the Titanic changed maritime history, another ship touted as the next great technological feat set sail on the Great Lakes. The Western Reserve was one of the first all-steel cargo ships to traverse the lakes. Built to break speed records, the 300-foot (91-metre) freighter dubbed “the inland greyhound” by newspapers was supposed to be one of the safest ships afloat. Owner Peter Minch was so proud of her that he brought his wife and young children aboard for a sum- mer joyride in August 1892. As the ship entered Lake Superior’s Whitefish Bay between Michigan and Canada on Aug. 30, a gale came up. With no cargo, the ship was floating high in the water. The storm battered it until it cracked in half. Twenty-seven people perished, including the Minch family. The only survivor was wheels- man Harry W. Stewart, who swam a mile (1.6 kilometres) to shore after his lifeboat capsized. For almost 132 years, the lake hid the wreckage. In July, explorers from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Soci- ety pinpointed the Western Reserve off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The soci- ety announced the discovery Saturday at the annual Ghost Ships Festival in Manitowoc, Wisc. “There’s a number of concurrent stories that make this important,” the society’s executive director, Bruce Lynn, said in a telephone interview. “Most ships were still wooden. It was a technologically advanced ship. They were kind of a famous family at the time. You have this new ship, con- sidered one of the safest on the lake, new tech, a big, big ship. (The discov- ery) is another way for us to keep this history alive.” Darryl Ertel, the society’s marine operations director, and his brother, Dan Ertel, spent more than two years looking for the Western Reserve. On July 22, they set out on the David Boyd, the society’s research vessel. Heavy ship traffic that day forced them to al- ter their course, though, and search an area adjacent to their original search grid, Lynn said. The brothers towed a side-scanning sonar array behind their ship. Side so- nar scans starboard and port, provid- ing a more expansive picture of the bottom than sonar mounted beneath a ship. About 97 kilometres northwest of Whitefish Point on the Upper Penin- sula, they picked up a line with a shad- ow behind it in 600 feet (182 metres) of water. They dialled up the resolution and spotted a large ship broken in two with the bow resting on the stern. Eight days later, the brothers re- turned to the site along with Lynn and other researchers. They deployed a submersible drone that returned clear images of a portside running light that matched a Western Reserve’s starboard running light that had washed ashore in Canada after the ship went down. That light was the only artifact recovered from the ship. “That was confirmation day,” said Lynn, the society’s executive director. Darryl Ertel said that discovery gave him chills — and not in a good way. “Knowing how the 300-foot Western Reserve was caught in a storm this far from shore made a uneasy feeling in the back of my neck,” he said in a so- ciety news release. “A squall can come up unexpectedly … anywhere, and any- time.” Lynn said that the ship was “pretty torn up” but the wreckage appeared well-preserved in the frigid fresh water. The Great Lakes have claimed thou- sands of ships since the 1700s. Perhaps the most famous is the Edmund Fitz- gerald, an ore carrier that got caught in a storm in November 1975 and went down off Whitefish Point within 100 miles (160 kilometres) of the Western Reserve. All hands were killed. The in- cident was immortalized in the Gordon Lightfoot song, The Wreck of the Ed- mund Fitzgerald. Assistant Wisconsin State Climatol- ogist Ed Hopkins said that storm sea- son on the lakes begins in November, when warm water meets cold air and winds blow unimpeded across open water, generating waves as high as 30 feet (nine metres). The lakes at that time can be more dangerous than the oceans because they’re smaller, mak- ing it harder for ships to out-maneuver the storms, he said. But it’s rare to see such gales form in August, Hopkins said. A Nation- al Weather Service report called the storm that sank the Western Reserve a “relatively minor gale,” he noted. A Wisconsin Marine Historical Soci- ety summary of the Western Reserve sinking noted that the maritime steel age had just begun and the Western Re- serve’s hull might have been weak and couldn’t handle the bending and twist- ing in the storm. The steel also becomes brittle in low temperatures like those of Great Lakes waters. The average water temperature in Lake Superior in late August is about 16 C, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad- ministration. The summary notes the Titanic used the same type of steel as the Western Reserve and that it may have played a role in speeding up the luxury liner’s sinking. — The Associated Press TODD RICHMOND PHOTOS BY GREAT LAKES SHIPWRECK HISTORICAL SOCIETY VIA AP The Western Reserve sank in Lake Superior in 1892 off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A deck rack on the bow of the Western Reserve cargo ship beneath Lake Superior. U.S. weighs travel ban on Cubans, Haitians THE Trump administration is weighing including Cuba and Haiti on a list of countries whose nation- als will face restrictions to enter the country, sources with know- ledge of the ongoing discussions told the Miami Herald. Cuba, which is on a State Depart- ment list of countries that sponsor terrorism, might end up on a “red list” of countries facing a total trav- el ban, while Haiti might end up on a less restrictive version of the list, the sources said. Shortly after taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump directed officials in the administration to come up with a list of nations that could be part of an expanded trav- el ban similar to the one he intro- duced during his first term for countries with Muslim majorities, based on the idea that they have a weak security apparatus to do background checks. Since last week, universities have been warning professors and stu- dents of the countries that might be targeted to quickly return to the United States. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee also issued a similar warning while providing a list of countries. The earlier version of the trav- el ban during the first Trump ad- ministration was later expanded to include North Korea and members of the Venezuelan government and their relatives. At the time, the U.S. government cited Venezuela’s lack of cooperation in providing infor- mation to verify whether its mi- grants posed a national security or public safety threat to the U.S. That first travel ban, in its dif- ferent versions, ended up affecting Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Kyr- gyzstan, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Venezuela and Yemen. Cuba was not includ- ed in the ban during Trump’s first term in office. The travel ban under discussion stems from a Jan. 30 executive order Trump signed ordering the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to identify “countries throughout the world for which vet- ting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.” When asked about the travel ban Tuesday, a State Department spokesperson told the Herald the agency “does not comment on in- ternal deliberations or communi- cations.” “As laid out in President Trump’s Executive Order 14161 ‘Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Sec- urity and Public Safety Threats,’ the visa adjudication process must ensure that U.S.-bound foreign travelers do not pose a threat to the national security and public safety of the United States,” the spokes- person said referring to the Jan. 30 executive order. “The Department is undertaking a full review of all visa programs as directed under this (executive order) and executing on adminis- tration priorities,” she added. The Reuters news agency, quot- ing three sources, reported last week the new travel ban could bar nationals of Afghanistan and Pak- istan from entering the U.S. The sources said other countries could also make the list but did not pro- vide specifics. In a recent email to its members, the American Association of Uni- versity Professors warned that the new ban, though primarily target- ed at Muslim-majority countries, could possibly include Venezuela and Haiti. The email warned that it would be “prudent” for mem- bers currently living or visiting the countries under threat “to make plans to return to the United States as soon as possible.” “U.S. citizens have the right to re-enter, but the vetting process may be extreme and chaotic,” the email said, also warning that any- one from the potentially targeted countries who are currently in the U.S. “should consider not leaving the U.S.” Until it is made official, the re- strictions that Cubans and Haitians would face are still unclear. In its past version, the travel ban indefin- itely suspended the issuance of im- migrant and nonimmigrant visas, but different countries faced vary- ing degrees of restrictions. — Miami Herald NORA GÁMEZ TORRES AND JACQUELINE CHARLES ;