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  • NTSB chair slams House aviation bill as ‘watered-down’ after 67 deaths near Washington – WTOP News

    The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday it’s misleading for members of the House to say their package of aviation safety reforms would address the recommendations that her agency made in January to prevent another midair collision.

    National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy testifies before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing at Capitol Hill, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)(AP/Jose Luis Magana)

    The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday it’s misleading for members of the House to say their package of aviation safety reforms would address the recommendations that her agency made in January to prevent another midair collision like the one last year near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

    NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the House bill’s “watered-down” requirements wouldn’t do enough to prevent a future tragedy, and wouldn’t be nearly as effective as a Senate bill that came up just one vote short of passing in the House earlier this week. The full NTSB followed up Thursday afternoon with a formal letter to two key House committees, saying that they can’t support the bill right now

    “We can have disagreements over policy all day. But when something is sold as these are the NTSB recommendations and that is not factually accurate, we have a problem with that. Because now you’re using the NTSB and you’re using people who lost loved ones in terrible tragedies,” Homendy said. “You’re using their pain to move your agenda forward.”

    The key concern of Homendy and the families of the people who died in the crash on Jan. 29, 2025, is that they believe all aircraft should be required to have key locator systems that the NTSB has been recommending since 2008, which would allow the pilots to know more precisely where the traffic around them is flying. The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Out systems that broadcast an aircraft’s location are already required around busy airports. It’s the ADS-B In systems that can receive data about the locations of other aircraft that isn’t yet standard.

    The House bill would ask the Federal Aviation Administration to draft a rule to require the best locator technology instead of just requiring ADS-B In, and even when it does suggest that technology should be required, the bill exempts business jets and small planes in certain parts of the airspace. Homendy said the bill is also weak in other areas, such as limits on when the military will be able to turn those locator systems off and the steps they must take to ensure those systems are working.

    House leaders defend their bill

    The leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee declined to respond to Homendy’s criticism Thursday, but Reps. Sam Graves and Rick Larsen have said they believe the ALERT bill they crafted effectively addresses the 50 recommendations that NTSB made at the conclusion of their investigation into the collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter.

    They defended their bill and pledged to work with the families, the Senate and the industry to develop the best solution as soon as possible. The committee will likely markup the bill within the next few weeks.

    “From the beginning, we have stressed the importance of getting this right, and we are confident that we will achieve that goal,” Larsen and Graves said. House Speaker Mike Johnson also said he is committed to getting the bill done.

    Victims’ families say they can’t support the bill as written

    The NTSB released a side-by-side comparison of its recommendations and the House bill to highlight all the ways the bill falls short of fully addressing the needed changes.

    Doug Lane, who lost his wife and son in the crash, and many of the other victims’ families said the House bill “is not really a serious attempt to address the NTSB recommendations.” He said the introduction of this bill just a few days before the vote on the ROTOR Act, which the Senate unanimously approved, seemed designed to “scuttle” that bill and send the ADS-B In recommendation into limbo to be considered in a lengthy rulemaking process.

    Matt Collins, who lost his younger brother Chris in the disaster, said that the bill must require ADS-B In to be acceptable to the families.

    “As far as the ALERT act — the way it’s written now, I can’t endorse the way its written now. It needs to include ADS-B In,” Collins said. “It’s non-negotiable for us as family members, extremely non-negotiable.”

    Missed warnings led to the crash

    The NTSB cited systemic weaknesses and years of ignored warnings as the main causes of the crash, but Homendy has said that if both the plane and the Black Hawk had been equipped with ADS-B In and the systems had been turned on, the collision would have been prevented. The Army’s policy at the time of the crash mandated that its helicopters fly without that system on to conceal their locations, although the helicopter involved in this crash was on a training flight, not a sensitive mission.

    But Homendy said the House seemed to pick and choose what they wanted to include from the NTSB recommendations.

    “We were very explicit of what needed to occur,” Homendy said. “When we issue a recommendation, those recommendations are aimed at preventing a tragedy from happening again. And if you’re just going to give us half a loaf, it’s not going to do it. We’re not gonna save lives.”

    __

    This story has been updated to correct the date of the Potomac River midair collision. It was Jan. 29, 2025, not 2005.

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    © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • Grieving families press Congress on aviation safety reforms after midair collision near DC – WTOP News

    Key senators and the families of the 67 dead in an airliner collision with an Army helicopter near the nation’s…

    Key senators and the families of the 67 dead in an airliner collision with an Army helicopter near the nation’s capital are convinced that advanced aircraft locator systems recommended by experts for nearly two decades would have prevented last year’s tragedy. But it remains unclear if Congress will pass a bill requiring every plane and helicopter to use them around every busy airport.

    The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing Thursday to highlight why the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending since 2008 that all aircraft be equipped with one system that can broadcast their locations and another one to receive data about the location of other aircraft. Only the system that broadcasts location is currently required. The hearing reviewed all 50 of the NTSB’s recommendations to prevent another midair collision like that of Jan. 29, 2025.

    Everyone aboard the helicopter and the American Airlines jet flying from Wichita, Kansas, including 28 members of the figure skating community, died when the aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River.

    The Senate already unanimously approved the bill that would require all aircraft flying around busy airports to have both kinds of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems installed. However, leaders of the key House committees seem to want to craft their own comprehensive bill addressing all the NTSB recommendations instead of immediately passing what’s known as the ROTOR act. The ADS-B Out systems continually broadcast an aircraft’s location and speed and have been required since 2020. But ADS-B In systems that can receive those signals and create a display showing pilots where all air traffic is located around them are not standard.

    Facing headwinds in the House

    Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz said he’s concerned some people are talking about possibly adding loopholes to the bill that would exempt regional airlines and private jets from the mandate. The Texas Republican said that would undermine the effort, and doesn’t make sense given the plane involved in this collision was flown by a regional airline.

    “Flying can only be safe when everyone follows the same standards,” Cruz said. He said that he hopes the House will vote on the bill in the next two weeks to send it to the president’s desk.

    But Rep. Sam Graves, who leads the House Transportation Committee, said Thursday he doesn’t plan to consider the Senate bill.

    “We’re going to do our own bill,” Graves said.

    If the American Airlines jet and the helicopter had also been equipped with one of the ADS-B In systems that can receive location data, the NTSB and the victims’ families and key lawmakers say, the pilots may have been able to avoid the collision because they would have received nearly a minute of advanced warning.

    The receiving systems would have provided more warning along with an indication of where the other aircraft was. But for that to work the helicopter’s ADS-B Out system that’s supposed to broadcast its location would have to be turned on and working correctly, which wasn’t the case on the night of the crash.

    Tragedy could have been prevented

    These locator systems are one of the measures that might have been able to overcome all the systemic problems and mistakes the NTSB identified in the disaster. That’s why this requirement was endorsed by NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy — the only witness called to the hearing — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and all of the Senate. This is the 18th time the NTSB has recommended the technology.

    “This seems like a no-brainer, right? Especially when this is not a new thing that they’re proposing,” said Amy Hunter, whose cousin Peter Livingston died on the flight with his wife and two young daughters.

    Sen. Tammy Duckworth said the FAA also failed to act on warnings from its own controllers after a similar near miss in 2013 about the risks that helicopters pose around DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), and an alarming number of near misses chronicled in the agency’s own data.

    “FAA’s failure in the face of blaring alarm bells, screaming out that it was a matter of when — not if — one of the near misses at DCA would become a deadly tragedy is, unfortunately, emblematic of a chronic crisis that’s plagued FAA for years,” Duckworth said.

    Afterward, the FAA made several changes including prohibiting helicopters from flying along the route where the crash happened whenever a plane is landing on DCA’s secondary runway and requiring all aircraft to use their ADS-B Out systems to broadcast their locations.

    The crash anniversary and NTSB hearing on the causes of the crash have made recent weeks challenging for victims’ families. And now the Olympics are reminding Hunter and others that their loved ones — like young Everly and Alydia Livingston — will never have a chance to realize their dreams of competing for a gold medal.

    Cost concerns for plane owners

    The biggest stumbling block is cost. Upgrading some airline jets might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, placing an expensive burden on some — especially regional airlines with tighter profit margins like the one that flew the jet that collided with the Army helicopter. Some also worry whether general aviation pilots could afford the upgrades. These systems haven’t even been designed and certified for some airline jets — particularly the CRJ models that were involved in this crash.

    But some airlines have already begun to add the technology to their planes, partly because in addition to the safety benefits, the systems can help increase the number of planes that can fly into an airport by spacing them more precisely. American Airlines leads the industry, having added the technology to its Airbus A321s over the past several years, equipping more than 300 of its roughly 1,000 planes to date. Homendy said American officials told her the retrofits cost less than $50,000 per plane.

    Any plane more than a decade old likely doesn’t have either of these systems installed. Most newer planes have at least an ADS-B Out system that broadcasts their location.

    But roughly three quarters of the pilots of business jets and smaller single-engine Cessnas and Bonanzas use portable devices that only cost $400 dollars that can tap into this location data and display the information about nearby aircraft on an iPad. So it doesn’t appear the legislation would create a significant expense for them. Homendy held up one of the small receivers during her testimony to demonstrate how easy it is for pilots to get ADS-B In warnings.

    Tim Lilley, a pilot himself, said having both these locator systems would have saved the life of his son Sam, who was copilot of the airliner, and everyone else who died. He said small plane owners have an affordable option, but even the expensive upgrades to large planes would be worth it.

    “If those recommendations had been fully realized, this accident wouldn’t have happened,” Lilley said. “I don’t know what value we put on the human life, but 67 lives would still be here today.”

    ___

    AP writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report from Washington D.C.

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    © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • Disaster on the Potomac, 1 Year Later: First responders to the crash recall ‘devastating’ recovery efforts – WTOP News

    While most watched the tragedy in the aftermath from phone screens and television, D.C. Police and Fire and EMS’ divers and crew members had to sift through the wreckage in the icy Potomac River.

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    First responders at DCA crash recall ‘devastating’ recovery efforts

    On the anniversary of the D.C. plane crash that claimed the lives of 67 people, WTOP takes a look back in our series “Disaster on the Potomac, 1 year later” — and the changes that followed in its aftermath. Find it this week on air and here on WTOP.com.

    Nearly one year ago, on Jan. 29, 2025, the capital region and the nation watched with shock and confusion as an American Airlines regional jet collided midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was on a training exercise.

    While most watched the tragedy in the aftermath from phone screens and television, D.C. Police and Fire and EMS’ divers and crew members had to sift through the wreckage in the icy Potomac River.

    D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said he was driving home from a meeting that night when he heard a fire boat calling in, initially saying there was a helicopter crash at Reagan National Airport.

    Ten minutes later, a fire boat reported that it smelled like jet fuel, and they had found a wing and four victims. That’s when he immediately turned around to head to the airport.

    “A few minutes later, there was some confirmation it was a commercial aircraft,” Donnelly told WTOP. “That’s a big deal.”

    Tim Ochsenschlager, a D.C. police officer with the Harbor Patrol Unit, was working the front desk of at the patrol unit’s pier and received information that a bystander had seen a fireball over the Potomac River, he told WTOP while aboard one of the Harbor Patrol boats.

    “At that point, I was pretty sure that there was a pretty serious accident,” Ochsenschlager said .

    Donnelly said over 300 first responders were on the scene that night from various agencies trying to recover and find any survivors. But within the first hour, they knew there would not be any. The highest priority then pivoted to providing the victims’ families closure by recovering the remains of everyone on board the helicopter and commercial flight.

    “You think of yourself as a police officer in a city; you see some pretty bad things, but I had never seen anything quite like this,” Ochsenschlager said.

    “The injuries that we were seeing were just about the most severe that you could possibly imagine,” he said.

    “The airplane essentially fell from about 300 feet straight into water, just absolutely devastating injuries. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I hope to never see it again.”

    It was particularly rough because many of the first victims that were recovered were children. It was the first time in his decade-long service in the Harbor Patrol that he recovered the remains of a child, Ochsenschlager said.

    “It was very difficult,” he told WTOP.

    First responders grieved for the families

    Donnelly said the nearly weeklong recovery effort of all the victims weighed heavily on first responders, both those in the water and at casualty collection points.

    “There’s anger that they have to deal with this. There’s grieving for the families. There is sort of personification in the sense that, ‘I have kids this age,’” Donnelly said. “We had two employees whose family members were on the plane.”

    Donnelly said it was other administrators’ jobs to encourage divers and other crew members, as well as watch out for any mental-health issues related to recovery efforts.

    “We normalize things every day,” Donnelly said speaking about the tragic situations first responders see every day. “The difference here is, it’s a lot more people than we’re used to. That affects everybody differently.”

    Some first responders initially faced a tough time, while others were stoic during efforts, but dealt with issues months later.

    “We have to stay on that,” Donnelly added.

    A double-stack trailer carrying D.C. Fire Department’s swift water rescue boats and equipment.
    (WTOP/Luke Lukert)

    WTOP/Luke Lukert

    Crews were so thorough that they even found wreckage from the 1982 Air Florida plane crash.
    (WTOP/Luke Lukert)

    WTOP/Luke Lukert

    ‘Really intense smell of jet fuel’

    Beyond the mental fatigue of recovering the 67 victims of the midair collision, divers had to deal with the physical harshness of the conditions. Near freezing water temperatures, sharp shards of aluminum jutting out from every corner of the crash site and corrosive jet fuel complicated dives.

    “Especially the first night, you could smell, just kind of in the back of your throat, the really, really intense smell of jet fuel,” Ochsenschlager told WTOP.

    The jet fuel actually began corroding responders’ diving suits, the rubber began failing and new equipment had to be brought in.

    It had not rained after the late January crash, leading to clearer visibility for crews diving amid the wreckage looking for remains and personal property.

    “The accident did happen in pretty shallow water. Even at high tide, it was probably anywhere from six to eight-feet deep. Then, at low tide, sometimes we were walking around in three or four feet of water. That made the recovery effort a lot better,” Ochsenschlager said.

    The water was around 34 degrees for much of the recovery efforts in the weeks after the crash. It only allowed divers to be in the water for an hour or less at a time. Ochsenschlager said most divers were only able to go in once a day.

    “February was one of the coldest that I remember, and we would be recovering stuff, and the water would freeze on the deck of the boat as soon as we got it there. That month was especially brutal,” he said.

    During the first couple of hours after the crash, around 80 divers cycled in and out every 15 to 20 minutes, partly because they were getting cold.

    “And we were worried about people’s mental health, because it was quite a disturbing scene to work,” Ochsenschlager said.

    They also had to search through sharp metal debris from the aircraft.

    “We had to be really careful when we were moving pieces of the aircraft around, because you could cut your glove. Once you’re cut, glove is cut, water starts leaking into your hand, and it can get into pretty much your entire (diving) suit,” he said.

    Finding the remnants of the crash

    After the recovery of the 67 victims’ remains, which was completed in six days, Donnelly said the focus turned to recovering and salvaging the wreckage so that the National Transportation Safety Board had everything they needed to complete an investigation.

    Multiple local agencies patrolled the shores as far north as Georgetown and as far south as the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge. The Army Corps of Engineers provided the expertise to lift large parts of the wreckage out of the water.

    Both Donnelly and Ochsenschlager were confident that with targeted help, the vast majority of the wreckage and victims’ personal property were recovered in the weeks after the crash.

    “We took a bit of pride knowing that no personal property has been recovered from any of the victims by any citizen,” Ochsenschlager said. “They’re not going to get re-victimized in a couple of years if something washes on shore. We took pride in trying to make sure that didn’t happen.”

    Crews were so thorough that they even found wreckage from a previous plane crash — that of a Boeing 737.

    “We have pretty good indication that it was wreckage from the Air Florida crash,” Ochsenschlager said.

    Air Florida flight 90 plunged into the Potomac River on Jan. 13, 1982. Seventy-four people died in that tragedy.

    Donnelly said the discovery from that 40-year-old crash helped develop regional cooperation for searching future crashes, including obtaining federal assets, which was essential for efforts during the 2025 tragedy.

    And, like that Air Florida crash, both Donnelly and Ochsenschlager noted that the community rallied around rescue and recovery efforts for the January crash. Both thanked the City Cruises ships that anchored near the crash site for offering a warm place for divers to rest.

    “They were out there, dedicated their time, effort and fuel. They kept us warm and gave us a command center where we could go and warm up and have good food and dogs to pet and take our minds off it,” Ochsenschlager said.

    “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without all of their help,” he added.

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  • Investigator describes intense air traffic at time of deadly midair collision near DC – WTOP News

    The NTSB will recommend additional action, and the families of the victims have said they hope that leads to meaningful changes.

     

    WASHINGTON (AP) — An air traffic controller felt a “little overwhelmed” by numerous aircraft around Reagan airport just minutes before an American Airlines jet collided midair last year with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, killing 67 people, an investigator said Tuesday at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing to determine the biggest factors in the crash.

    During the hearing’s early stages, some themes emerged: The jet’s pilot had no warning about the helicopter, and airspace was crowded the night of Jan. 29, 2025.

    “It will not be an easy day,” NTSB board member Todd Inman said in his opening remarks. “There is no singular person to blame for this. These were systemic issues across multiple organizations.”

    Everyone aboard the jet, flying from Wichita, Kansas, and the helicopter died when the two aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River. It was the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001.

    The Federal Aviation Administration made several changes after the crash to ensure helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace around the nation’s capital, and last week made those changes permanent. The NTSB will recommend additional action, and families of the victims have said they hope that leads to meaningful change.

    NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said she couldn’t believe the FAA didn’t realize the helicopter route in use during the crash didn’t provide adequate separation from planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway.

    “We know over time concerns were raised repeatedly, went unheard, squashed — however you want to put it — stuck in red tape and bureaucracy of a very large organization,” Homendy said. “Repeated recommendations over the years.”

    NTSB investigator Katherine Wilson said an air traffic controller felt a “little overwhelmed” when traffic volume increased to 10 aircraft about 10 to 15 minutes before the collision, but then “felt the volume was manageable when one or two helicopters left the airspace.”

    Yet about 90 seconds before the collision, Wilson said, “traffic volume increased to a maximum of 12 aircraft consisting of seven airplanes and five helicopters. Radio communication showed that the local controller was shifting its focus between airborne, ground and transiting aircraft.”

    The workload “reduced his situational awareness,” Wilson said.

    NTSB investigators showed a video animation to demonstrate how difficult it would have been for the pilots in both aircraft to spot the other amid the lights of Washington. The animation also showed how the windshields of both aircraft and the helicopter crew’s night vision goggles restricted views.

    Some people were escorted from the room, including two in tears, as an animation of the flights began. Several entered the auditorium wearing black shirts bearing the names of crash victims.

    “I hope that we see a clear path through the recommendations they offer to ensure that this never happens again,” Rachel Feres, who lost her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife and two young daughters in the crash, said ahead of the hearing. “That nobody else has to wake up to hear that an entire branch of their family tree is gone, or their wife is gone or the child is gone. That’s what I hope coming out of this. I hope we have clarity and urgency.”

    Whether that happens depends on how Congress, the Army and the Trump administration respond after the hearing. Victims’ families say they will keep the pressure on officials to act.

    Young Alydia and Everly Livingston were among 28 members of the figure skating community who died in the crash. Many of them had been in Wichita for a national skating competition and development camp.

    The NTSB has already spelled out many key factors that contributed to the crash and detailed what happened that night. That includes a poorly designed helicopter route past Reagan airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet (23.7 meters) higher than it should have been, the warnings that the FAA ignored in the years beforehand, and the Army’s move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopter’s location more clearly.

    Several other high-profile crashes and close calls followed the D.C. collision, alarming the flying public. But NTSB statistics show that the total number of crashes last year was the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, with 1,405 nationwide.

    ___

    Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and White reported from Detroit. AP Airlines writer Rio Yamat contributed from Las Vegas.

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    © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

    WTOP Staff

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  • US government admits Army and air traffic controller failures in deadly midair collision near DC – WTOP News

    The US government now admits failures by the pilots of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a controller in the Reagan National Airport tower during the January 29 midair collision.

    (CNN) — The US government now admits failures by the pilots of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a controller in the Reagan National Airport tower during the January 29 midair collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people.

    The new admission is part of court documents filed by the Department of Justice in United States District Court in Washington, DC, on Wednesday in a civil lawsuit brought earlier this year by the family of a passenger killed on American Eagle flight 5342.

    “The United States admits that it owed a duty of care to Plaintiffs, which it breached,” the new filing says, setting up the ability for the families to seek damages.

    The concession in the 209-page court filing is an unexpected admission from the military as the National Transportation Safety Board continues its independent investigation of the crash.

    A total of 67 people were killed in the midair collision after the Army crew told controllers in the airport control tower that they would maintain “visual separation” from flight 5342 which was about to land at National Airport.

    “The United States admits pilots flying PAT25 failed to maintain proper and safe visual separation from AE5342,” the court filing says.

    The US government also admits in the suit that an air traffic controller in the tower “did not comply” with an FAA order governing air traffic control procedure.

    “The United States is admitting the Army and FAA’s responsibility for the needless loss in the crash of an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 at Reagan National Airport. However, the government rightfully acknowledges that it is not the only entity responsible for this deadly crash,” plaintiff attorney Robert Clifford said in a statement in response to the filing.

    There’s still a fair amount of finger-pointing and legal distinctions the Justice Department is making in court, despite its admissions on Wednesday.

    In the lengthy response to the lawsuit, federal government lawyers admit the Black Hawk crew’s choices in flight were a “cause-in-fact and a proximate cause of the accident and the death.”

    They also argue that the federal air traffic controllers around the DC-area airport can’t be held liable because they weren’t the cause of the crash.

    The commercial airlines are still fighting the lawsuit, asking for it to be dismissed by the court, and have not made the same admissions the federal government did on Wednesday.

    During public hearings this summer, the NTSB focused on cultural issues in the Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion, possible errors in the altimeters on board the helicopter, and whether the layout of helicopter routes near the airport created an accident waiting to happen.

    A final report and probable cause from the NTSB is not expected until next month at the earliest.

    Lawyers representing victims’ families say the crash was caused by “collective failures” by the US government that “caused the mid-air collision that resulted in the senseless and tragic deaths of 67 individuals” and that government personnel – including controllers in the air traffic control tower – “should have known, that the airport approaches, and the airspace in the vicinity of Washington D.C.’s Reagan National Airport (‘DCA’), presented certain safety risks, specifically including the possibility of a mid-air collision.”

    They also maintain that the crew of the helicopter on a low-altitude training mission were using night-vision goggles which “unreasonably distracted them” and “limited their field of vision.”

    The federal government, in its filing, admitted “the airspace near DCA is busy at times and the risk of midair collision cannot be reduced to zero.”

    In a statement, a US Army spokesperson said, “The Army understands and respects the need for families to receive more information regarding the tragic DCA crash. We acknowledge that many individuals are still seeking answers about the incident and the measures being taken to prevent a similar tragedy.

    A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment beyond the court filing.

    CNN has also reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines for comment.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Senators seek to change bill that allows military to operate just like before the DC plane crash – WTOP News

    Senators from both parties pushed Thursday for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims’ families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

    Senators from both parties pushed Thursday for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims’ families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

    The head of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash, a group of the victims’ family members and senators on the Commerce Committee all said the bill the House advanced Wednesday would make America’s skies less safe. It would allow the military to operate essentially the same way as it did before the January crash, which was the deadliest in more than two decades, they said.

    Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz filed two amendments Thursday to strip out the worrisome helicopter safety provisions and replace them with a bill they introduced last summer to strengthen requirements, but it’s not clear if Republican leadership will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to be changed at this stage because that would delay its passage.

    “We owe it to the families to put into law actual safety improvements, not give the Department of Defense bigger loopholes to exploit,” the senators said.

    The bill would roll back reforms

    Right now, the bill includes exceptions that would allow military helicopters to fly through the crowded airspace around the nation’s capital without using a key system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations just like they did before the January collision. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring that in March. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the bill a “significant safety setback” that is inviting a repeat of that disaster.

    “It represents an unacceptable risk to the flying public, to commercial and military aircraft, crews and to the residents in the region,” Homendy said. “It’s also an unthinkable dismissal of our investigation and of 67 families … who lost loved ones in a tragedy that was entirely preventable. This is shameful.”

    The biggest unions representing pilots, flight attendants and other transportation workers joined the chorus criticizing the bill on Thursday. Sara Nelson, who is president of the Association of Flight Attendants, questioned why this was proposed. She said these provisions are “not only reckless and indefensible, but also a direct undermining of the NTSB’s safety guidance.”

    Congress may turn to another bill to fix the concerns

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is looking into the concerns but thinks they can be addressed by quickly passing the aviation safety bill that Cruz and Cantwell proposed last summer that would require all aircraft operators to use both forms of ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, the technology to broadcast aircraft location data to other planes and air traffic controllers. Most aircraft today are equipped with ADS-B Out equipment but the airlines would have to add the more comprehensive ADS-B In technology to their planes.

    That legislation would also revoke an exemption on ADS-B transmission requests for Department of Defense aircraft.

    “I think that would resolve the concerns that people have about that provision, and hoping — we’ll see if we can find a pathway forward to get that bill done,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.

    Military routinely flew without ADS-B turned on

    The military used national security waivers before the crash to skirt FAA safety requirements on the grounds that they worried about the security risks of disclosing their helicopters’ locations. Tim and Sheri Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines jet, said this bill only adds “a window dressing fix that would continue to allow for the setting aside of requirements with nothing more than a cursory risk assessment.”

    Military helicopters like the Black Hawk involved in the crash did send some location data to controllers through a transponder. But the FAA has said that ADS-B data is more precise, and the NTSB has been recommending for decades that all aircraft be equipped with such systems. The Army was concerned about using those systems because anyone — including a plane enthusiast on the ground — can use them to know precisely where a helicopter or airplane is located.

    Homendy said it would be ridiculous to entrust the military with assessing the safety risks when they aren’t the experts, and neither the Army nor the FAA noticed 85 close calls around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash. She said the military doesn’t know how to do that kind of risk assessment, adding that no one writing the bill bothered to consult the experts at the NTSB who do know.

    Aviation attorney Bob Clifford, who represents the first family to sue over the D.C. crash, said the military shouldn’t be allowed to get out of the new safety measures the Transportation Department took after the NTSB recommended changes to protect the flying public.

    “Sixty-seven innocent people lost their lives because of the military’s unnecessary insistence on secrecy about its helicopter operations in public airspace,” Clifford said.

    The NTSB’s final report on the cause of the D.C. crash won’t be released until next year, but investigators have already identified a number of factors that contributed, including that the helicopter was flying too high on a route that only provided scant separation between helicopters and planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway.

    Homendy said part of the investigation focuses on the limitations of the various systems that are designed to alert other pilots and air traffic controllers about the location of an aircraft. The pilots of the American jet that was flying into D.C. from Wichita, Kansas, did get a warning about traffic nearby 20 seconds before the collision. But at the low altitude the plane was traveling as it prepared to land, the basic collision avoidance system recommended by this bill was partly inhibited to prevent false alarms and because there is little room to maneuver.

    The White House and military didn’t immediately respond Thursday to questions about these safety concerns in the bill. But earlier this week Trump made it clear that he wants to sign the National Defense Authorization Act because it advances a number of his priorities and provides a 3.8% pay raise for many military members.

    The Senate is expected to take up the bill next week, and it appears unlikely that any final changes will be made. But Congress is leaving for a holiday break at the end of the week, and the defense bill is considered something that must pass by the end of the year.

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  • FAA implements new safety measures after DC midair collision – WTOP News

    The FAA made permanent changes to how helicopters operate in the airspace around D.C. in response to the Jan. 29 midair collision near Reagan National Airport.

    The Federal Aviation Administration made permanent changes to how helicopters operate in the airspace around D.C. in response to the Jan. 29 midair collision near Reagan National Airport.

    The changes include more restricted helicopter routes at Reagan National to emergency and law enforcement zones, reducing the size of several helicopter zones, and closing one flight path.

    Similar adjustments were made at Baltimore Washington International and Dulles airports to increase the distance between helicopters and commercial flights.

    According to a news release from the FAA, there will also be increased staffing and support at Reagan, and take offs from the Pentagon will be discontinued until the FAA and Department of Defense update procedures and fix technical issues.

    The administration has also updated charts with clearer instructions for pilots. The Reagan National Airport chart is below:

    The updated chart following the FAA’s changes made for Reagan Airport. (Courtesy Federal Aviation Administration)

    The January collision is currently still under investigation and is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board.

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  • Family of 1 of the 67 Washington plane crash victims sues the FAA, Army and American Airlines – WTOP News

    The family of one of the 67 people killed when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., on Wednesday sued the government and the airlines involved.

    The family of one of the 67 people killed when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., sued the government and the airlines involved on Wednesday, saying they didn’t recognize the warning signs after more than 30 documented near misses in the area.

    Other families are expected to join this first lawsuit seeking to hold the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army, American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, accountable for the deadliest U.S. plane crash since 2001. PSA Airlines operated Flight 5342 that crashed Jan. 29.

    The lawsuit says they “utterly failed in their responsibilities to the traveling public.”

    The Army declined to discuss the details of the lawsuit, while American and PSA said they would fight any allegation that they caused or contributed to the collision.

    “Flight 5342 was on a routine approach to DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) when the Army helicopter — that was above the published helicopter route altitude — collided with it,” the airlines said in a statement. “American has a strong track record of putting the safety of our customers and team members above everything else.”

    The FAA said it “acted decisively” to improve safety by further restricting helicopter flights around Reagan. Air traffic controllers also stopped relying on pilots to maintain visual separation from other aircraft within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of the airport. On the night of the crash, a controller twice gave the helicopter pilots that responsibility after they said they saw the jet.

    The lawsuit was filed by Rachael Crafton, the widow of Casey Crafton, who was killed in the collision. Her lawyers represent most of the victims’ families.

    A statement written by Rachael Crafton and read to reporters Wednesday by her brother-in-law described the family’s despair.

    “Nearly eight months ago, our lives were shattered in a moment, and the grief has been unimaginable. The future we dreamed about was taken away from us,” Dailey Crafton said.

    Determining the cause of the crash

    The National Transportation Safety Board has listed many issues that may have contributed to the crash, although its final report won’t be ready until next year.

    The Black Hawk helicopter was flying above the 200-foot (60-meter) limit, but even if it had been at the correct altitude, the route it was flying provided a scant 75 feet (23 meters) of separation between helicopters and planes landing at Reagan airport’s secondary runway. The helicopter’s flight data recorder indicated it was flying 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than its altimeter showed before the two aircraft collided.

    The NTSB also said the FAA failed to recognize an alarming pattern of close calls near the airport in the years before the crash, and ignored concerns about helicopter traffic its controllers raised years earlier. Investigators also said overworked controllers regularly squeezed as many planes as possible into the landing pattern with minimal separation. Acknowledging these and other factors could have prevented the collision.

    The lawsuit says the airlines failed in their duty to protect their passengers because the pilots had not been adequately trained to handle close-flying helicopters and the airline didn’t effectively mitigate the risks.

    Other airline policies, such as allowing pilots to accept the secondary runway that intersects with the helicopter route and heavily scheduling flights late in the hour, may have contributed.

    “There is clear evidence that there were dozens of near misses and thousands of reports of congestion between commercial aircraft and military aircraft at Reagan National that were being ignored by the airlines,” said lawyer Bob Clifford, representing the families.

    The lawsuit says the PSA pilots, who received an alert about traffic in the area 19 seconds before the crash, should not have waited until the last second to pull up. The lawsuit says the pilots’ warning system showed the relative direction and altitude of the helicopter.

    The pilots would also have heard controllers warn the helicopter that a plane like the one they were flying was close, although controllers didn’t warn the PSA pilots directly.

    Dailey Crafton said in the family statement he read that his brother, who worked in the aviation industry, was “betrayed by the system he trusted. We all were.”

    Turning grief into action

    Doug Lane lost his wife, Christine, and his 16-year-old son, Spencer — an aspiring Olympic figure skater — in the crash.

    Addressing the news conference, Lane urged investigators and Congress to quickly determine what went wrong and take action to prevent future accidents.

    “We’ve also turned our grief into action,” Lane said of the victims’ families. “We collaborated with Congress on critical air safety reforms. We secured a much needed set of oversight investigations into the FAA, and we will not rest until similar investigations are underway into the U.S. Army.”

    Bill and Renee Parente said they hope the lawsuit will present answers to lingering questions about the crash that killed their 34-year-old son, Anthony Parente, less than six months before he was due to get married.

    Bill Parente said his family is mad because this crash didn’t have to happen.

    “We are on a mission to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bill Parente said after the news conference. “We have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman and Rick Gentilo in Washington, D.C., contributed.

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    WTOP’s Mike Murillo explains how one family who lost a loved one in the DCA plane crash is suing multiple agencies

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  • Political and aviation leaders look at safety issues at DCA and possible improvements – WTOP News

    In the aftermath of the Jan. 29, fatal midair collision near Reagan National Airport, two Virginia congressional leaders discussed on Friday the ways to make the airport and the entire national aviation network safer.

    In the aftermath of the Jan. 29 fatal midair collision near Reagan National Airport, two Virginia congressional leaders discussed on Friday the ways to make the airport and the entire national aviation network safer.

    But Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Don Beyer, who represents the state’s 8th District, acknowledged during a roundtable discussion in Alexandria that it will require leadership from government officials and some new regulations about operations around the highly congested airspace around Reagan National.

    Many federal agencies have agreed that the airspace around Reagan is among the most complicated and congested in the country. Beyer said part of the challenge is that Reagan is operating at 40% above its designed capacity.

    “Every time we board a plane, we have to trust that we built a system that is going to get us there,” he said. “The airport was designed for 14 million passengers, and it is doing 25 million per year, and the busiest runway in the United States.”

    Beyer said he is frustrated that the Army is blocking his request to open an investigation into the Jan. 29 crash, despite a bipartisan request by at least two dozen senators.

    He plans to submit legislation to force the Army to do that, and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has also proposed a similar bill to look into what Cruz calls “systemic breakdowns” that could have been a factor in the nation’s deadliest aviation crash in more than 20 years.

    Sixty-four passengers and crew members on an American Airlines regional jet and three crew members in an Army Black Hawk helicopter died when the Black Hawk hit the jet as the passenger plane was on its final approach to Reagan National. Both aircraft plunged into the icy waters of the Potomac River.

    Both Warner and Beyer have been longtime opponents of adding flights at Reagan and they fought a measure in the last Congress to add five more long-distance flights from the airport to the West Coast. Ultimately, that measure passed Congress in the new Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Bill and was signed into law by President Donald Trump.

    Beyer and Warner are calling for an independent review of the entire region’s airspace, with the possibility that the number of flights might have to be reduced at Reagan.

    One of those speaking at the session was Matthew Collins, who lost his younger brother Chris in the crash.

    “How do we honor these 67 people and prevent something like this from ever happening again?” Collins said.

    Former pilots, air traffic controllers and other aviation stakeholders also presented recommendations and ideas to Warner and Beyer, and the two said they will discuss many of them with the Federal Aviation Administration and others to improve safety.

    Beyer and Warner said the Army has voluntarily cut the number of helicopter flights from the Pentagon’s nearby helipad and helicopter specific routes have been closed and moved further south from Reagan. But now, some residents in those flight paths are complaining about aircraft noise from the helicopters.

    In May, after another close call involving military aircraft and two planes that were landing at Reagan National, forcing both to abort their landings, the FAA put new restrictions on Army helicopter flights from the Pentagon.

    In August, the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General started an audit of the FAA’s airspace management and the FAA’s allowance of exemptions of what is called ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. That’s a GPS-based monitoring system in aircraft that gives pilots significantly more information about where other aircraft are, in relation to where their aircraft is located.

    Because of the information it provides, ADS-B is considered an upgrade over the existing radar technology.

    On the night of the Jan. 29 crash, the Black Hawk helicopter had an ADS-B system onboard, but it was turned off.

    On a national level, Warner said he is still very concerned that even as the FAA says it is rapidly training more air traffic controllers, the system is still short an estimated 3,000 controllers to bring it up to the full complement of controllers.

    “How are we going to get the personnel in terms of FAA air traffic controllers and others whose really job is the front line of keeping us safe?” he asked.

    The National Transportation Safety Board investigation is ongoing and a final report from the safety agency is expected sometime in the first or second quarter of 2026.

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