Business
Conditions May Have Stymied Black Hawk Crew Before Fatal Crash
Flying helicopters near Ronald Reagan National Airport always carries some risk. But the conditions on the moonless night of Jan. 29, when an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet collided, were unusually challenging.
Many of the factors that contributed to the disaster are still being uncovered as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board try to reconstruct the collision that killed 67 people. The midair crash, which caused wreckage from both aircraft to tumble into the icy Potomac River below, was the nation’s deadliest aviation accident since 2009.
Investigators have said the helicopter was flying about 100 feet higher than authorized in its designated portion of the airspace and are trying to determine why.
But interviews with helicopter pilots suggest that the Black Hawk was also dealing with a set of complex flying conditions, some of which are typical for the bustling area around National Airport outside Washington and some of which were unique to the series of events that happened last Wednesday. And the crew was flying an older-model aircraft that lacked certain safety technologies in its cockpit that are commonplace in those of commercial airplanes in the United States.
“Given the complexity of everything going on there, it is a higher-risk place to fly,” said Austin Roth, a former Black Hawk instructor for the Army who says he often flew the helicopter routes near National Airport while in service.
N.T.S.B. safety investigators have not assessed any blame on the Black Hawk crew, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “fairly experienced.”
The safety agency said on Tuesday that there was still information that needed to be collected from the helicopter, a process that is expected to begin this week when its wreckage is lifted from the Potomac. Investigators said the two aircraft collided at 300 feet — a detail that has raised questions about how the helicopter got off course, given that it was not authorized to fly higher than 200 feet above ground.
The New York Times, through interviews with six current and former military aviators and a civilian helicopter pilot who frequently flies the routes near National Airport, has pieced together some understanding of the conditions that the crew faced the night of the crash.
The crew in the UH-60 Black Hawk left its home base, Fort Belvoir in Virginia, after dark last Wednesday to conduct a training mission to allow the co-pilot, Capt. Rebecca Lobach, to perform a required annual evaluation flight.
It was part of the small group of military and civilian law enforcement helicopters authorized to fly in the highly restricted airspace over Washington and Northern Virginia. Those pilots must fly along designated routes that generally follow the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. The air traffic controllers inside the tower at National Airport manage that airspace for helicopters and planes alike.
These routes specify certain altitude restrictions for helicopters along the water, including Route 4, the one that prohibits flying higher than 200 feet over the stretch of the Potomac where the collision occurred.
That restriction, according to several of the pilots, provides little room to maneuver in case of an emergency. At such a low altitude over a river, moving up — not down — is the more realistic response.
Mr. Roth said there are helicopter routes at Dulles International Airport and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that allow pilots to fly over the commercial jet airspace rather than through it, which gives pilots more options in the event of an emergency.
“I can’t think of anywhere where you can fly next to a major airport at 200 feet,” said Mr. Roth, who was in the same unit as the crew of the helicopter that crashed. A combination of dark skies and surrounding city lights — lights that would have been amplified exponentially if the crew members were wearing night-vision goggles — may have distracted them as they searched for nearby air traffic.
“So they’re flying over a black water surface of the Potomac with ground clutter and the buildings behind them,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois Democrat who flew Black Hawk helicopters during her military career.
At about 8:46 p.m. last Wednesday, an air traffic controller warned the helicopter crew that a passenger jet was nearby. That plane, American Airlines Flight 5342, had been redirected from Runway 1, which regional jets commonly used, to the lesser-used Runway 33.
Captain Lobach was most likely in the right-hand seat, said a senior Army official who has flown the National Airport helicopter routes repeatedly but requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
This is significant, the official said, because if the instructor pilot was busy or distracted with something, Captain Lobach’s seat on the right side of the aircraft might have put her in poor position to view the descending American Airlines flight on her left.
Still, other experienced military pilots said they were puzzled at the crash, given that military pilots are trained to be ready for such hazards.
The Black Hawk, a twin-engine aircraft introduced in the 1970s that has inspired a variety of models, has long been a fixture in the U.S. military, both for general purposes and for more tailored missions. In the Army alone, about 2,000 Black Hawks are in operation today.
In the Washington area, which is home to the White House, the Pentagon and several air fields from which both training flights and the transport of the president and other senior officials often originate, Black Hawks are ubiquitous.
The 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir flies two types of Black Hawks: the UH-60L, an old model, and the VH-60M, a newer one. The aircraft involved in the crash was the older model. It does not have the ability to let pilots fly on autopilot but it is not considered insufficient for the job, according to the senior Army official.
Regardless, the official said, the crew flying along the Potomac River would not have found autopilot helpful. Low-level flying, he said, requires constant attention to terrain, obstacles and routes.
The Black Hawks, even the older models, are not especially hard to operate, said current and former military aviators. But the congestion around National Airport, one of the country’s busiest public airspaces, requires particular adeptness and a willingness to hang back if necessary to let passenger jets take off or land safely.
“That aircraft was in the wrong place well before they were in the same literal airspace with the CRJ,” said Jon-Claud Nix, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, using the abbreviation for the jet that was involved in the collision.
Mr. Nix, who has reviewed the air traffic control recordings and other public details of the crash, added, “They just needed to hold off a little bit to properly identify or locate their correct traffic.”
He said that in the final moments before the crash, the Black Hawk crew was essentially on its own to avoid collision. That is because the crew, according to a recording of the air traffic control audio, had requested what is known as “visual separation,” which under aviation rules means the crew would search out nearby traffic on its own, without assistance from controllers.
And the older Black Hawk model the crew flew last Wednesday most likely did not have certain air-safety systems that are standard among U.S. passenger jets.
For example, it would not have had the Traffic Collision Avoidance System, nicknamed TCAS, which alerts pilots to the fact that their planes are dangerously close to other aircraft and can redirect pilots to quickly climb or descend if a crash seems imminent.
The pilots say one or all of these factors could have contributed to a tragic sequence of events.
“Especially on that route,” Mr. Roth said, “it’s 200 feet which is a low altitude. It’s in proximity to other aircraft. The lighting conditions are tough and there’s just not many places in the world where all of that is happening to anyone all at once.”
Rivian said it’s laying off hundreds of employees, or less than 2% of its workforce, as part of restructuring efforts aimed at making the company profitable for the first time.
The layoffs come one week after the Irvine-based electric vehicle maker began deliveries of its highly anticipated R2 SUV.
The company is hoping that the R2, which is currently only available as a performance version for $57,990, could attract more customers with its lower price tag.
But industry analysts said the performance R2 is still not affordable for many Americans, and investors reacted with disappointment to the first deliveries June 9, with shares falling 7% that day. On Wednesday, Rivian shares gained .33 points, or 2%, to close at $16.26.
The company said a standard version of the R2 starting at $44,990 will become available next year.
The layoffs took effect on Monday and affected Rivian’s service and customer organization employees, including sales and marketing teams. Rivian employed 15,232 people as of December.
“We recently restructured a handful of teams within Rivian as we work to profitably scale our business,” a company spokesperson said.
The laid off employees have been provided with severance packages and are encouraged to apply for other open roles with Rivian, the company said.
Rivian may be trying to reach profitability by saving money on labor, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds.
“You have to wonder to what degree they do plan on replacing those people with some level of AI and automation,” he said.
Rivian, which is pouring money into autonomous vehicle efforts including a robotaxi partnership with Uber, has struggled to turn a profit with its luxury EVs.
The layoffs are likely not directly tied to recent reception of the R2, auto analyst Brian Moody said.
“I think that it’s declining interest in new electric cars, and maybe declining interest in expensive things,” he said. “We can surmise that [layoff] process began long before the R2 launch.”
The company lost $3.6 billion last year and recently said it is no longer expecting to meet its 2027 adjusted core profit target.
There has been a broad cooling of the EV market. Major automakers including Honda and Ford have cut back their EV options as excitement for the vehicles has fallen under the Trump administration. A $7,500 EV tax credit for new vehicles expired in September.
Rivian cut 4.5% of its workforce in October, or more than 600 jobs, following the expiration of the credit. The company also laid off about 200 employees in September.
In a recent turnaround, Rivian surprised the market with strong earnings results in February, reporting gross profits for 2025 of $144 million compared with a net loss in 2024 of $1.2 billion. Gross profit is revenue without subtracting the cost of production expenses.
In its earnings release, Rivian credited the swing to “strong software and services performance, higher average selling prices, and reductions in cost per vehicle.”
“The company has never posted a full year’s worth of profit, and this is the one lever they can pull to rightsize things,” Drury said.
Social media company Snap showcased a pair of its $2,195 augmented reality glasses Tuesday, staking a claim in a race to reshape how people interact with computers.
The Santa Monica tech company faces fierce competition as it takes on bigger rivals such as Meta that are dominating the sale of smart glasses and needs to convince more people to buy another gadget. Google is planning to release smart glasses in the fall and Apple is reportedly working on a pair as well.
The announcement also shows how the rising popularity of artificial intelligence-powered tools is fueling the release of hardware beyond the smartphone. While Snap and Google have failed to get consumers to buy smart glasses in the past, tech companies have been doubling down on the idea.
In a speech at the AWE conference in Long Beach, Snap’s chief executive and co-founder Evan Spiegel highlighted how people could do more with its AR glasses, Specs, than with rival products. He views the glasses as the next “major leap in computing.”
People can learn to play the drums, figure out how to fix their car, watch videos and more with the glasses, which are now available for preorder and are expected to ship in the fall. Augmented reality involves overlaying digital objects onto a person’s view of the physical world.
“The smartphone put our lives in our pockets, but augmented reality puts computing into the world where life actually happens, and that is the shift from phones to Specs,” Spiegel said.
Meta sells a variety of AI glasses, including a more expensive pair with a display and wristband that lets people ask questions to an AI assistant and answer calls and texts, along with other tasks. It’s also worked on a prototype of AR glasses called Orion.
Meta has a reputation of incorporating features released by Snap, the parent company of disappearing messaging app Snapchat. That has included a popular feature where photos and videos vanish in 24 hours.
“Those copycats up north aren’t going to be stealing this one,” said Spiegel, as the crowd erupted into applause and laughter.
While smart glasses aren’t as popular as smartphones, sales have grown.
Meta, which has a partnership with Ray-Ban, is leading in the sale of smart glasses without displays, according to the International Data Corporation. Roughly 2.25 million units of these glasses shipped in the first quarter of this year, a 167% jump year-over-year.
“Dethroning the giant that is Meta won’t come easy,” wrote Jitesh Ubrani, an IDC research manager in a post this week about smart glasses. “Meta’s core advantage isn’t just market share; it’s distribution.”
Meta has been expanding its retail footprint, opening up new stores in California.
But Snap will have to convince people that it’s worth paying $2,195 for a pair of AR glasses with more tech features. Spiegel pointed to the hefty price tags of the Mac in 1984 and Apple’s $3,500 mixed-reality headset.
“New computers almost always begin as something that just a few people can really afford,” he said.
On Tuesday, Snap’s share price dropped about 10%, closing at roughly $5.16.
Snap’s big bet on AR glasses comes at a crucial point for the company, which slashed 16% of its full-time workforce, or 1,000 workers, in April to cut costs. Snap this year also ended a deal with AI company Perplexity that was expected to bring the social media company $400 million.
Los Angeles fund manager Capital Group has completed its $210-million purchase of the Bunker Hill skyscraper it already occupied as a renter and vows to continue expanding its downtown presence.
Capital Group was an anchor tenant at Bank of America Plaza, which it will now operate as a landlord. The 55-story tower at 333 S. Hope St. was completed in 1974 and has long ranked as one downtown’s most prominent office addresses. Capital Group has been headquartered there since 1978.
Bank of America Plaza at 333 S. Hope St. was purchased by investment firm Capital Group. The building also houses the firm’s headquarters.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The move to buy the building at a substantial discount to its previous value is part of a pattern of well-heeled tenants deciding to become owners instead of renters in recent years as office property values plunged due to the pandemic and a shift to remote work for many companies.
“We knew the best landlord we could possibly have would be ourselves,” said Capital Group Chief Executive Mike Gitlin when the sale was first announced in April.
Bank of America Plaza’s previous owner, Brookfield Properties, defaulted on a $400 million loan and put the building on the market instead of facing foreclosure.
It was the largest office sale in Los Angeles in 2026 and the largest in Los Angeles County since 2023, according to real estate brokerage Colliers, which marketed the property on behalf of the court-appointed receiver.
Potential buyers competing for Bank of America Plaza included both private and institutional investors from the U.S. and overseas, said Mark Schuessler, a broker at Colliers.
Capital Group has been headquartered in downtown Los Angeles since it was founded in 1931, according to Chief Operating Officer Rob Klausner . “We view it as the ideal location to invest in as we bring our Los Angeles based teams together,” he said.
Capital Group is the largest occupant in the building, taking up 350,000 square feet on 14 floors. It plans to gradually take over another five floors as it consolidates employees from other offices downtown and in Santa Monica.
“The best way to ensure a great environment in downtown L.A. is to create what we’re calling a vertical campus” with 2,100 employees, Gitlin said. “It was just this unique opportunity where the price was much lower than it had been historically, and it was for sale.”
Bank of America is also a large tenant in the building and will continue to have its name on top. Other occupants include economic consulting firm Analysis Group Inc., law firm Musick Peeler & Garrett and Alliant Insurance Services.
Capital Group has more than 9,000 employees in 34 offices in multiple countries. It manages $3.4 trillion in assets for millions of wealth management and institutional clients, a representative said.
Owner-users have surged as key players in L.A.’s office market, now accounting for nearly half of all deals, according to real estate data provider CoStar , while institutional investors’ share of purchases has fallen from 45% to 26%.
Office users from the public sector are among the buyers. The city of Los Angeles plans to buy a 35-story tower downtown for use by the Department of Water and Power.
Manulife U.S. Real Estate Investment Trust said in April that it would sell its high-rise at 865 S. Figueroa St. for $92.5 million pending approval from Los Angeles officials. It has an assessed value of $248 million.
Another major public buyer of a downtown office building was Los Angeles County, which in 2024 bought Gas Co. Tower for $200 million, a steep drop from its $632-million valuation in 2020. County officials said at the time that the foreclosure sale was too good a deal to pass up.
The county is gradually moving workers into the 55-story skyscraper at the base of Bunker Hill that was widely considered one of the city’s most desirable office buildings when it was completed in 1991.
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