Trump blames ‘obsolete’ U.S. air traffic control system for the plane and chopper collision near D.C.

Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed last week’s deadly collision of a passenger jet and Army helicopter on what he called an “obsolete” computer system used by U.S. air traffic controllers, and he vowed to replace it.

Trump said during an event that “a lot of mistakes happened” on Jan. 29 when an American Airlines flight out of Wichita, Kansas, collided with an Army helicopter as the plane was about to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, killing all 67 people on board the two aircraft.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Trump blamed it on diversity hiring programs. But on Thursday, he blamed the computer system used by the country’s air traffic controllers.

“It’s amazing that it happened,” Trump said during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that’s going to be used for good. I think what is going to happen is we’re all going to sit down and do a great computerized system for our control towers. Brand new -- not pieced together, obsolete.”

Trump said the U.S. spent billions of dollars trying to “renovate an old, broken system” instead of investing in a new one. He said in his private jet, he uses a system from another country when he lands because his pilot says the existing system is obsolete.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Elon Musk said in posts on X that Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency is going to help rapidly upgrade the nation’s aviation safety system.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been working since the mid-2000s -- long before Trump’s first term in office -- to upgrade the air traffic control system through its NextGen program. Congress passed a law in 2003 that prompted the upgrades because of concerns about mounting air travel congestion and concerns that it would only get busier.

Geoff Freeman, who heads the travel industry group the U.S. Travel Association, lauded Trump’s pledge to replace the current system, saying the industry has repeatedly called for greater investments in technology and manpower.

Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at U.S. airports. Among the reasons they have cited for staffing shortages are uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training and mandatory retirements.

Trump said that if the nation had a newer system, alarms would have sounded when the Black Hawk helicopter, which was on a training exercise, reached the same altitude as the plane.

But an FAA report after the crash said that the controller did get an alert that the plane and helicopter were converging when they were still more than a mile (1.6 kilometres) apart. The controller responded by asking the helicopter if it had the plane in sight and directed the helicopter to pass behind the plane. The helicopter responded that it did have the plane in sight.

The FAA made clear Thursday it is going to ensure that helicopters and planes will no longer share the same airspace over the Potomac River. Most helicopter flights are banned in the area, but if a presidential flight or police helicopter does have to go through the area, no planes will be allowed nearby.

An early focus of the investigation has been confirming the altitude of the plane and helicopter. The jet’s flight recorder showed its altitude as 325 feet (99 metres), plus or minus 25 feet (7.6 metres).

Data from the airport’s air traffic control system suggests the helicopter was above its 200-foot (61-metre) flight ceiling. The screen the controller was looking at that night showed that based on radar and other data, the helicopter was at 300 feet (91 metres), the NTSB said, noting that the figure would have been rounded to the nearest 100 feet (30 meters).

To get more precise information, investigators need to be able to examine the wreckage of the still-submerged Black Hawk to verify the data. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday afternoon that all major components of both the helicopter and jet have now been removed from the river and will be taken to a secure hanger where NTSB investigators can examine them. Salvage crews will work to remove smaller debris with baskets over the next 10 days before finishing work on Feb. 16.

“We will continue pushing forward in the coming days until we are confident the river is safe for navigation and that elements of evidentiary value are recovered and provided to the appropriate authorities,” the Corps Baltimore District Commander Col. Francis Pera said.

This crash was the deadliest in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.

There was concern after the crash that Trump’s efforts to slash the size of the federal workforce could worsen the shortage of air traffic controllers if some of them accepted the deferred resignation offers sent to all federal employees last week. But air traffic controllers were told by their union Thursday that certain positions within the Federal Aviation Administration, including theirs, were exempt.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in its email to members that additional positions might be exempt based on the employees' “national security or public safety responsibilities.” The union had already recommended to its members that they reject the offers, which were extended the day before the midair collision.

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Josh Funk, The Associated Press

Associated Press reporters Aamer Madhani, Adriana Gomez Licon and Thomas Beaumont contributed to this report.