Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger believes that flying at night and over water are two factors which contributed to yesterday's tragic .
The hero pilot, who famously guided a plane with double engine failure to safety by landing it on the shared his theory with the New York Times following the incident.
He said: "There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night.
"Night time always makes things different about seeing other aircraft - basically all you can do is see the lights on them.
"You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed? Everything is harder at night."
Yesterday, the American Airline and Sully hopes that this, combined with voice recordings and air traffic control data will help to shed light on how the accident was able to happen.
He added: "I'm just devastated by this. We have the obligation to learn from every failure and improve."
Sully also believes that at least one of the pilots would have been able to see the other and that the would not necessarily have been required to separate the two.
He told Good Morning America: "It seems apparent from the air traffic control communications that the airplanes were able to see each other, at least one was able to see the other.
"The air traffic controller was able to relieve himself of the requirement to have him separate the airplanes, and the pilots would have to separate from each other visually by identifying the other aircraft and staying a safe distance away. Obviously at some point, separation was tragically lost."
The incident has opened a discussion on the safety of the aviation industry, and Sully believes that incidents can happen on rare occasions if the dominos are "lined up the wrong way."
He added: "It's hard to have the diligence and the dedication to adhere to best practices on every minute of every hour of every day, every week, every month, every year for a decades long aviation career. Any lapse could potentially be fatal, even though we have a lot of safety.
"If all the dominoes line up in the wrong way, we could have on rare occasions a catastrophic event.
"Given enough time, given enough flights, given enough flight hours, eventually whatever can happen will happen unless we work very hard to prevent every incident from turning into an accident."
Sully described Washington's Reagan International airport as a unique place to fly into, requiring specific training due to its short runway and the heavily built-up area surrounding it.
64 people were on board when it collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three service personnel.
A preliminary report has said that air traffic control at the airport was "not normal" for the time of day and volume of traffic at the time of the crash.