The Federal Aviation Administration repeatedly ignored warnings of dangerous conditions before the Jan. 29, 2025, collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger airliner that killed all 67 aboard both aircraft, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday. Screengrab of National Transportation Safety Board Video.
The Federal Aviation Administration ignored warnings about dangerous air traffic conditions at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport ahead of the deadly mid-air collision that killed 67 people a year ago, National Transportation Safety Board officials said Tuesday.
Air traffic controllers were overworked and commonly dealt with near-collisions that likely numbed them to the dangers of the many close calls that they encountered at the airport, according to the NTSB officials.
The NTSB conducted a hearing after investigating the crash over the past year and determined the FAA ignored several complaints and warnings of dangers to air traffic made by air traffic controllers and others at the airport.
“We have an entire tower who took it upon themselves to try to raise concerns over and over and over and over again, only to get squashed by management and everybody above them with [the] FAA,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a Tuesday morning hearing at the NTSB’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
A pilot aboard the Army helicopter confirmed seeing the airliner when asked by the controller, but simulations created by the NTSB suggest it was very hard for the helicopter and airliner pilots to see one another.
NTSB created three simulations of the flight that feature the viewpoints from the helicopter’s pilot, the airliner’s pilot and the air traffic controller. The helicopter and airliner simulations are included in the same video simulation, while a third video gives an overview of the crash.
The simulations include closed captioning of the communications between the tower and the respective pilots and suggest the helicopter pilot mistook another aircraft for Flight 5342, while the airliner’s pilot was not warned of the helicopter’s close proximity.
The helicopter simulation goes black at the moment of the collision.
Homendy said existing flight paths for helicopters and aircraft landing on the Reagan National Airport’s runway targeted by Flight 5342 were dangerously close to one another.
“How is it that no one, absolutely no one in the FAA, did the work to figure out there was only 75 feet … of vertical separation between a helicopter on route four and an airplane landing on runway 33?” Homendy asked.
The crash between a U.S. Army helicopter and American Eagle Flight 5342 at 8:58 p.m. EST on Jan. 29, 2025, killed all 64 passengers and crew aboard the airliner and the three crew members on the Army helicopter, who were undertaking a night training flight.
The helicopter was a Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawk, while the airliner was a Bombardier CRJ-700, which was operated by PSA Airlines on behalf of American Eagle.
Air traffic at the time of the collision was especially crowded, which compounded the problem of the two flight paths being dangerously close to one another.
Homendy and others said multiple federal agencies overly relied on respective pilots to visually identify dangers and maintain a safe distance from other aircraft to prevent collisions, which contributed greatly to causing the mid-air collision.
Low visibility contributed to deadly conditions, and individual errors were made by respective air crews and air traffic controllers, but systemic failures, ultimately, caused the collision, NTSB member Michael Graham said.
“Individual errors may be noted throughout the course of the day, but I want to make it crystal clear any individual shortcomings were set up for failure by the systems around them,” Graham told those attending the hearing.
When the mid-air collision occurred, a single air traffic controller was handling the airplane and helicopter traffic when a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System warning was triggered due to the close proximity of the Army helicopter and Flight 5342.
