New safety actions taken in wake of D.C. midair collision

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday announced a ban on helicopter operations along the route that led to the deadly January midair collision over Washington, D.C., in which dozens of people were killed, would continue after the National Transportation Safety Board recommended it stay in place.

The NTSB earlier in the day announced a number of recommendations to address a “serious safety risk” in the wake of the deadly crash.

The collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane left 67 people dead. It was the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009. The American Airlines flight, which was coming from Wichita, Kansas, was preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it was struck by an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission. Both fell into the Potomac River after the collision. 

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy began a news conference Tuesday with an urgent recommendation to ban helicopter operations on a specific route near the airport when runways 15 and 33 are in use. When helicopters are flying that route at the maximum authorized altitude of 200 feet, they may have just 75 feet of vertical separation from an airplane on landing approach to runway 33. 

Homendy said she and other NTSB members determined that posed an “intolerable risk to aviation safety.” The vertical separation could be even less, depending on the helicopter’s lateral distance from the Potomac River shoreline or if an approaching airplane was below its designated visual glidepath, Homendy said. 

At a press conference later in the day, Duffy confirmed, “We are going to continue with our restrictions.”

Duffy had temporarily banned the route after the disaster, but that ban had been set to expire at the end of the month.

“As that deadline nears we remain concerned about the significant potential for future midair collision at DCA, which is why we are recommending a permanent solution today,” Homendy said. 

Duffy noted there would be exceptions for travel for the president and vice president and for life-saving or law enforcement missions.

Homendy said that the NTSB is also recommending that the Federal Aviation Administration designate an alternative helicopter route that can be used when those runways are in use. She said the NTSB will not prescribe a particular route. 

Homendy said the NTSB developed the recommendations after looking at nearly 15 years’ worth of incidents at DCA. Between 2011 and 2024, at least one traffic alert and collision avoidance system was triggered per month due to the proximity of a helicopter to a plane, Homendy said. In over half of the reviewed encounters, the helicopters may have been above the route altitude restriction of 200 feet, Homendy said. The Black Hawk helicopter in the January crash was above the altitude restriction. About two-thirds of the events occurred at night.

Between October 2021 and December 2024, there were 15,214 close proximity events between commercial airplanes and helicopters, where there was lateral separation of less than 1 nautical mile, or around 6,000 feet, and vertical separation of less than 400 feet. There were 85 events that involved a lateral separation of less than 1,500 feet and vertical separation of less than 200 feet, Homendy said.

“The NTSB report provides ample data that this helicopter route and the commercial aviation landing route never should have been allowed to co-exist,” Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce committee, which oversees civil aviation, said in a statement. “A permanent restriction of this helicopter route needs to be urgently implemented by the FAA today. The data also raises serious questions as to how such a route was allowed to continue when alarm bells were literally going off.”

American Airlines said Tuesday in a statement it was “grateful for the National Transportation Safety Board’s urgent safety recommendations to restrict helicopter traffic near DCA and for its thorough investigation.”  

Duffy said the Transportation Department has “deployed AI tools” to help find other hotspots with similar military and commercial cross-traffic at airports across the country. He said that effort began several weeks ago and has been used at 12 airports. 

Duffy also said the entire country’s air traffic control system should be updated.

“I want to be clear, our system is safe. It’s old. But it’s safe,” he said.

Duffy said he believed a full system overhaul could be completed within three-and-a-half to four years, but noted it would cost “tens of billions of dollars,” and said he wants to present his plan to Congress soon. He said part of the plan is to move from copper wire to a combination of “fiber, wireless and satellite.” Duffy said the system would also use brand new radar and new terminals for air traffic controllers. He also said the Transportation Department would “deploy resources for runway safety” so air traffic controllers would have more accurate data on where various planes are as they land, take off and taxi.

Verizon had already been contracted to lay the fiber cables, and Duffy said that contract was “still in play. How we move forward is a question we’re gonna grapple with,” saying the effort would require multiple companies.

Homendy said the NTSB’s preliminary report will include information about the crew of both aircraft and the history of the flights, much of which has already been made public. Full NTSB investigations typically take at least a year.

“I often say that the easiest and quickest part of the investigation is determining what happened,” Homendy said. “The part that takes longer is the how and why.” 

Federal investigators have been working to piece together the events that led to the crash. Investigator in charge Brice Banning previously described it as “a complex investigation” with “a lot of pieces” that NTSB members were working to gather. 

Wreckage from the plane and helicopter has been recovered. Investigators also recovered black boxes from both aircraft. Black boxes record flight data, including altitude and speed, as well as audio from the flight. 

Investigators said in mid-February that it’s possible the helicopter crew did not hear instructions from an air traffic controller to pass behind the plane. Seventeen seconds before the collision, a radio transmission from the air traffic control tower directed the helicopter to pass behind the airliner, but because the helicopter’s microphone key was pressed down during part of the transmission, they may have not heard the words “pass behind the,” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. 

The NTSB has determined that the collision likely occurred at an altitude of about 325 feet, which would have put the Black Hawk above its 200-foot limit for the area. Cockpit conversations from a few minutes before the crash indicate conflicting altitude data. The type of Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash typically has two systems for measuring altitude, which may explain the discrepancy. 

Investigators believe that the helicopter crew, who the Army has described as highly experienced, were wearing night-vision goggles at the time of the incident.

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