WASHINGTON – Federal investigators looking into the cause of the January crash between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people recommended a ban on some helicopter flights on Tuesday, saying the current setup “poses an intolerable risk.”
Jennifer Homendy, Chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, presented frightening statistics about near misses to highlight the danger that has existed near Ronald Reagan National Airport for years, and expressed frustration that it took a midair collision to bring it to light.
In just over three years, she said, there were 85 close calls in which a few feet (meters) in the wrong direction could have resulted in the same type of accident that occurred on January 29 when a military helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River as the plane approached the airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that he will follow the NTSB’s recommendations for the route where the midair collision occurred. He stated that the guidelines, which will be released on Wednesday, will include modifications such as allowing presidential flights and lifesaving missions.
Helicopters will no longer be “threading the needle” by flying beneath landing planes, he explained.
NTSB urges ban on some helicopter flights at Washington airport where 67 people died in midair crash
The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that some helicopter flights be banned in the area where a military helicopter and a passenger jet collided near Washington, D.C., according to AP correspondent Donna Warder.
The Federal Aviation Administration will also use artificial intelligence to analyze data from all airports to ensure that similar dangers do not occur elsewhere, he said, noting that other airports have cross-traffic.
Both Homendy and Duffy agreed that the FAA should have recognized the hazards at Reagan Airport sooner.
“The data was there.” “It was not properly analyzed to identify this risk,” Duffy explained.
The NTSB determined that the current separation distance between planes and helicopters at Reagan Airport is “insufficient and poses an intolerable risk to aviation safety,” Homendy stated.
She expressed her heartfelt sorrow for families who have lost loved ones. The victims included 28 figure skaters.
“It should not take tragedy to require immediate action,” she was saying.
Members of several families who lost loved ones said in a statement that the NTSB’s preliminary report revealed that this was not an isolated incident.
“It also reinforces what we, as the families of the victims, already suspected: serious, systemic failures in air travel safety cost our loved ones their lives and continues to threaten public safety,” according to the statement.
Aviation lawyer Robert Clifford, who represents at least six families, stated that the airline had a responsibility to address known issues.
“Those charged in transportation with the highest duty of care can not run yellow lights, and they have been running flashing red lights for years, it sounds like, and it is just pathetic,” said the minister.
Proposed changes aimed at improving safety
According to Homendy, helicopters and planes can land within 75 feet (23 meters) of each other. Investigators found 15,000 instances of planes receiving alerts about helicopters in close proximity between October 2021 and December 2024, she said.
Investigators discovered that planes received serious evasive action alerts at least once a month between October 2011 and December 2024 when they were too close to a helicopter, according to Homendy. In more than half of those cases, the helicopter may have exceeded its established altitude limit for the route.
Safety advocate Mary Schiavo, a former Inspector General of the United States Transportation Department, described the FAA’s failure to act on data gathered by the NTSB in just a few weeks following the crash as a “shocking dereliction of duty”. She mentioned that the FAA had promised to warn pilots about areas with a higher collision risk.
“They were going to be very proactive in warning pilots about these hotspots. “I mean, this is more than a hotspot,” Schiavo explained. “This is absolutely radioactive, to have 15,214 close proximity events in three years, it is unbelievable.”
Following the midair collision, the FAA restricted helicopter flights near the airport to ensure that planes and helicopters no longer share the same airspace. Flights are now temporarily halted when helicopters pass by.
The NTSB’s proposal would temporarily close a critical route for law enforcement, Coast Guard patrols, and government operations flights, but only when the runways in question are in use, which accounts for only about 5% of flights at Reagan.
According to Homendy, the NTSB recommends that the FAA find a “permanent solution” for alternate routes farther away for helicopter traffic.
Searching for a cause of the crash
Investigators believe the helicopter’s altitude readings were incorrect in the moments leading up to the crash, and the crew may not have heard critical instructions from air traffic controllers. The helicopter’s radio altitude was 278 feet (85 meters), which exceeded the 200-foot (61-meter) limit for the location.
The helicopter pilots may have also missed a portion of another communication in which the tower stated that the jet was turning toward a different runway, Homendy said last month. And the crew was wearing night-vision goggles, which would have limited their peripheral vision.
The Black Hawk crew consisted of an instructor pilot with 968 hours of flight experience, a pilot with approximately 450 hours, and a crew chief with nearly 1,150. According to Army officials, the crew was familiar with Washington’s crowded skies.
The NTSB’s ongoing investigation will look at the amount of traffic at Reagan and the staffing in the control tower to see if either factor played a role. It will take more than a year to receive the final NTSB report.
John Cox, an aviation safety expert, said he has flown in and out of Reagan in a variety of planes since the late 1970s and has occasionally received collision alerts about helicopters, but it is usually clear that they will pass behind him.
“That is just something that happened going in and out of there, and it worked for decades,” said Cox, CEO of Safety Operating Systems, an aviation safety consulting firm in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Several things had to go wrong for this collision to occur, he explained.
A spate of recent aviation disasters
Within just a month’s time earlier this year, there were four major aviation disasters in North America, most recently in mid-February when a Delta flight flipped and landed on its roof at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, injuring 21 people.
Those accidents and close calls left some worried about the safety of flying, though fatal crashes are rare and U.S. airlines’ track record is remarkably sound.
President Donald Trump blamed the midair collision on what he called an “obsolete” air traffic control system and promised to replace it. He also faulted the helicopter for flying too high.
Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls at airports.
Doug Lane, whose wife Christine Conrad Lane, and their 16-year-old son Spencer, died in the crash, said Tuesday he hopes the way the near-misses are reported gets a closer look and that NTSB recommendations will be implemented.
“If we’re going to invest in an organization like this, it needs to be outfitted with state of the art technology and given staffing at a level that’s going to set them up for success,” Lane said.
Duffy said Tuesday that he will present an expensive plan to Congress within the next few weeks to overhaul the system with new technology. He hopes to complete it within four years.
