NTSB urges ban on some helicopter flights at Washington airport where 67 people died

In this image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, wreckage is seen in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Bacon, U.S. Coast Guard via AP) (Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor B/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.”

National 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 National 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 Jan. 29 when the military helicopter collided 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 that 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 28 members of the figure skating community.

“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 current practice helicopters and planes can be as close as 75 feet (23 meters) 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 serious 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. In over half those instances, the helicopter may have been above its established altitude restriction for the route.

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 higher collision risk.

“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.”

Following the midair collision, the FAA took steps to restrict helicopter flights around the 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 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 per cent of flights at Reagan.

Homendy said the NTSB is recommending that the FAA find a “permanent solution” for alternate routes farther away for helicopter traffic.

Searching for a cause of the crash

Investigators have said the helicopter may have had inaccurate altitude readings 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), which would put it above its 200-foot (61-meter) limit for the 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 made up of an instructor pilot with 968 hours of flight experience, a pilot with about 450 and a crew chief with nearly 1,150. 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. It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report.

Aviation safety expert John Cox said he piloted in and out of Reagan in all different kinds of planes since the late 1970s and sometimes received collision alerts about helicopters, but it was usually easy to see that they were going to pass behind him.

“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.

Multiple things had to go wrong for this collision to happen, he added.

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.

Article by Josh Funk, John Seewer And Nathan Ellgren.