WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal investigators looking into the cause of the January collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people recommended a ban on some helicopter flights Tuesday, saying the current setup “poses an intolerable risk.â€
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy laid out frightening statistics about near misses to underscore the danger that has existed for years near Ronald Reagan ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Airport and expressed anger that it took a midair collision for it to come to light.
In just over three years, she said, there were 85 close calls when a few feet (meters) in the wrong direction could have resulted in the same kind of accident that happened on Jan. 29 when the with an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River as the plane was approaching the airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he'll adopt the NTSB's recommendations for the route where the midair collision occurred. He noted there will be some modifications in the guidelines to be released Wednesday, including allowing presidential flights and lifesaving missions.
Helicopters no longer will be “threading the needle†flying under landing planes, he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration also will use artificial intelligence to analyze data from every airport to make sure there aren’t similar dangers elsewhere, he said, adding there are other airports with cross-traffic.
Homendy and Duffy both said the hazards at Reagan airport should have been recognized earlier by the FAA.
“The data was there. It wasn’t effectively analyzed to see we had this risk,†Duffy said.
The NTSB determined that the existing separation distance between planes and helicopters at Reagan airport is “insufficient and poses an intolerable risk to aviation safety,†Homendy said.
She said she was devastated for families that are grieving because they lost loved ones. Among the victims were
“It shouldn’t take tragedy to require immediate action,†she said.
Members of several families who lost loved ones said in a statement that the NTSB’s preliminary report showed 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,†the statement said.
Aviation lawyer Robert Clifford, who represents at least six families, said the airline had a responsibility to address known problems.
“Those charged in transportation with the highest duty of care can’t run yellow lights, and they’ve been running flashing red lights for years, it sounds like, and it’s just pathetic,†he said.
Proposed changes aimed at improving safety
Under the current practice helicopters and planes can be as close as 75 feet apart from each other during landing, Homendy said. Investigators have identified 15,000 instances of planes getting alerts about helicopters being in close proximity between October 2021 and December 2024, she said.
Investigators determined that planes got alerts to take evasive action because they were too close to a helicopter at least once a month between October 2011 and December 2024, Homendy said.
Safety advocate Mary Schiavo, a former Inspector General of the U.S. Transportation Department, called it a “shocking dereliction of duty†for the FAA to have failed to act on data the NTSB gathered in just a few weeks since the crash. She noted that the FAA had pledged to warn pilots about places with a higher risk of a collision.
“They were going to really be proactive to warn pilots about these hotspots. I mean, this is beyond a hotspot," Schiavo said. "This is absolutely radioactive, to have 15,214 close proximity events in three years, it’s unbelievable.â€
Following the midair collision, the FAA took steps to restrict around Reagan ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Airport to ensure that planes and helicopters are no longer sharing the same airspace. Now flights are put on hold temporarily when helicopters need to pass by the airport.
The NTSB’s proposal would close a vital route for law enforcement, Coast Guard patrols and government operations flights at times, but only when the runways in question are in use and they account for only about 5% of the flights at Reagan.
Homendy said the NTSB is recommending that the FAA find a “permanent solution†for alternate routes farther away from the airport for helicopter traffic.
Searching for a cause of the crash
Investigators have said the helicopter may have had in the moments before the crash, and the crew may not have heard key instructions from air traffic controllers. The radio altitude of the helicopter was 278 feet (85 meters) at the time of the collision, which would put it above its 200-foot (61-meter) limit for that location.
The helicopter pilots may have also missed part of another communication, when the tower said the jet was turning toward a different runway, Homendy said last month. And the crew was wearing night-vision goggles that would have limited their peripheral vision.
The Black Hawk crew was comprised of an instructor pilot with 968 hours of flight experience, a pilot with about 450 hours of flying and a crew chief who had flown nearly 1,150 hours. Army officials have said the crew was familiar with the crowded skies around Washington.
The NTSB in its ongoing investigation will look at the amount of traffic at Reagan and the staffing in the control tower to determine if either of those factors played a role in the collision. It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report.
Aviation safety expert John Cox said he flew in and out of Reagan as a pilot in all different kinds of planes since the late 1970s and sometimes received collision alerts about nearby helicopters, but it was usually easy to see that the helicopter was going to pass behind the plane.
“That’s just something that occurred going in and out of there, and it worked successfully for decades,†said Cox, who is CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Cox said multiple things had to go wrong for this collision to happen.
A spate of recent aviation disasters
Within just a month’s time earlier this year, there were in North America, most recently in mid-February when and landed on its roof at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, injuring 21 people.
Those accidents and close calls about the safety of flying even though fatal crashes are rare and the track record of U.S. airlines is remarkably sound.
President Donald Trump on what he called an “obsolete†air traffic control system and promised to replace it. He also faulted the helicopter for .
Federal officials about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at U.S. airports.
On Tuesday, Duffy said he will present a plan to Congress within the next couple weeks to completely overhaul the system with new technology.
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Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio; Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.
