Karoun Demirjian spent more than 30 hours covering three days of investigative hearings into the Jan. 29 crash in Washington.
The relationship between the National Transportation Safety Board, the government entity that investigates civilian airplane accidents, and the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency responsible for aviation safety, can frequently be contentious, especially after a major national tragedy.
Last week, a rift between those two main regulators of aviation safety spilled out into public view.
Frustrations -- and sometimes tempers -- flared in uncommonly raw fashion during the board's marathon of investigative hearings into the deadly midair crash between a military helicopter and a commercial jet near Ronald Reagan National Airport in January. Board members grilled witnesses, including air traffic controllers and F.A.A. managers, over three days and 30 hours of public testimony.
Jennifer Homendy, the N.T.S.B. chair, led other board members in accusing the F.A.A. of knowingly stymieing efforts to improve safety at Reagan National Airport and stonewalling parts of the board's investigation into the crash. And Ms. Homendy directly accused the agency of fostering a culture among the air traffic control operation that discouraged employees from raising legitimate safety concerns, including by wielding the threat of retaliation.
"There is and always has been a healthy tension between the two agencies," said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the F.A.A. and the N.T.S.B. And while the level of public outrage on display during board hearings depends largely on the proclivities of its members, he added, "in this particular case, it's a shift."
Ms. Homendy and the other board members were careful not to direct their ire toward Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, or Bryan Bedford, the F.A.A. administrator. Still, the very public airing of grievances raised questions about the working relationship between the two agencies at a critical juncture.
The N.T.S.B. makes safety recommendations, but it is up to the F.A.A. to put them into place. The crash at Reagan National Airport, and a series of near misses and tower outages at major airports in the months since, have dampened public confidence in the safety of flying, intensifying the need for cooperation.
"Warning signs were ignored, or just not known or identified or sought, which is quite tragic," Ms. Homendy told reporters late Wednesday, after the first day of testimony.
In a statement, the F.A.A. said officials "have and will continue to fully support the N.T.S.B.'s investigation," stressing that the agency had been proactive about addressing concerns and adopting the board's early recommendations.
The statement added that "if there has been any stonewalling, withholding of information or intimidation -- those actions will be identified and remedied without hesitation."
The gloves had already begun to come off in the final hours of the hearing on Wednesday.
Ms. Homendy lost her patience with F.A.A. managers who claimed they never knew that air traffic officials from Reagan National Airport had urged higher-ups to address the potential risks posed by a helicopter route, known as Route 4, that crossed under the descent path for airplanes landing on a supplementary runway, No. 33.
The Army Black Hawk that crashed into the commercial jet on Jan. 29 was flying along Route 4, and at the time of impact, was 78 feet higher than the F.A.A.-mandated ceiling of 200 feet.
A number of witnesses testified that the devices pilots relied upon to measure their altitude frequently were off by about 100 feet of helicopters' actual flying height. Air traffic controllers, knowing the risks, sought to make changes as part of a helicopter-focused working group at the airport -- but were told by district managers that doing so would be seen as "too political," according to the transcript of an interview included in an N.T.S.B. report.
"Every sign was there that there was a safety risk, and the tower was telling you that," Ms. Homendy told F.A.A. officials. She accused agency managers of routinely dismissing safety concerns raised by employees in the airport's air traffic control tower and of reassigning people who had previously voiced concerns after the accident. She also said they used F.A.A. bureaucracy as an excuse to avoid making needed changes.
"Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead," she said, denouncing the F.A.A.'s process for reviewing safety recommendations. "Fix it. Do better," she added.
By the last day of the hearings, Ms. Homendy was accusing F.A.A. officials outright of trying to stymie the N.T.S.B.'s investigation by withholding documents and data the board had been requesting for months.
"I think you're interfering in the investigation," she charged, "because you're basically telling us 'no' every way you can."
Aviation safety experts said it was understandable for tensions to run unusually high after the collision because of the magnitude and rarity of the tragedy -- it was the first fatal crash involving a major American airline in over 15 years.
But part of the N.T.S.B.'s visible agitation in the hearings could also be strategic, those experts said. The fact that the crash happened just outside the nation's capital -- along with the fact that power brokers from the Trump administration and Congress are eager to respond -- has created a unique opportunity for the board to influence sweeping changes.
"The intensity has increased partly because of the visibility of this particular catastrophe and the proximity to Washington," said Alan Diehl, a former aviation safety official with the N.T.S.B. and the F.A.A.
"By doing that, the N.T.S.B. hopes to convince both the F.A.A. and Congress that we need a revolution," he added,"in both personnel policies within the F.A.A. as well as funding policies."
Ms. Homendy, who spent more than 14 years on Capitol Hill before President Trump nominated her to fill one of the Democratic slots on the board, has a keen understanding of Washington dynamics, according to board watchers. She is known for being more public-facing and, at times, being more comfortable adopting an adversarial posture than some of her predecessors.
But she was not alone last week in being pointedly critical of the F.A.A.
J. Todd Inman, a Republican member of the N.T.S.B., also accused the agency of stonewalling the investigation. The F.A.A. withheld documents about staffing at the control tower for months, he charged; dumping thousands of pages on the board on the Friday before the hearing only after Ms. Homendy appealed to agency and Transportation Department leaders for help. At another point Mr. Inman lost his patience with officials' promises to do better.
"We'd like to be treated privately the same way we are publicly,"he said.
Mr. Inman also accused the F.A.A. of refusing to share critical data about real-time flight tracking technology, forcing the safety board to spend $50,000 annually to evaluate it "because the F.A.A. does not consider N.T.S.B. a trusted government partner."
F.A.A. officials in the hot seat frequently defended their agency. Nick Fuller, the F.A.A.'s acting deputy chief operations officer, responded to allegations that the agency had withheld documents and data by arguing that some of the board's requests had been unclear, and that "in fact, we just gave you the latest and greatest" information.
Mr. Fuller also pushed back on accusations from all three presiding board members that after the Jan. 29 accident, the F.A.A. had removed managers at Reagan National's control tower who had previously raised concerns about traffic, staffing or other safety pitfalls. He argued that staffing changes had not been retaliatory, but rather executed in the interest of solving the problem quickly.
"I was given a task to fix the facility risk between helicopters and fixed wing," Mr. Fuller said, referring to airplanes, "and it wasn't to work through a collaborative process and allow a few months -- it was to get the job done immediately."
On several occasions during the hearings, Ms. Homendy sought assurances that F.A.A. employees who were called as witnesses in the investigation would not be retaliated against for their testimony -- a step prompted by reports that some who had critical things to say were being harassed, she told reporters on Thursday after that day's testimony.
"Nobody can take what is clearly a safety issue and get it up through the offices that should be making the decision to ensure safety in the airspace -- or somebody's ignoring them,"she told reporters."You raise a red flag, and two things happen: You don't get it, you don't get the safety change that you have asked for; or you're transferred out after an accident occurs."
But experts warned against assuming that acrimony from hearings would disrupt two agencies' expert staff members' ability to work together.
"Overall,the process is healthy,"said John Cox,a former airline pilot who runs a safety consulting firm.
"Is there friction? Yes. Is it normal? Yes. Was last week a little more so than normal? Yes,"he added.
"Will that encourage F.A.A.to move more quickly?I hope."