On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released findings from its investigation into the January 2025 crash between a regional passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. While all kinds of wild ideas have been tossed around about the cause of the crash, the NTSB hasn’t very firmly pointed the finger at the aircraft. It’s a pretty damning report, listing a long series of failures at the FAA that made destruction all the more likely. In other words, this terrible accident, which killed 67 people, was no fluke or inevitable chance. This was the result of wrong decisions over time.
There’s a lot to unpack from the NTSB: They accuse the FAA of a wide range of wrongdoing in the long, intermediate and immediate periods before the crash. At night, the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport had only one man assigned to manage both airplane and helicopter traffic. That information was known shortly after the accident, but the NTSB determined there was no real need for it to happen. The New York Times. Staffing levels were sufficient for aircraft and helicopters to have separate ATCs under their responsibility.
What did that lone ATC do? This allowed the Black Hawk to go into visual separation, meaning the helicopter would look around for other aircraft instead of taking instructions from the tower. While this is a common procedure, the NTSB found that Reagan National Airport had been overusing it for years, essentially delegating ATC responsibility to the pilot. Unfortunately, the simulations suggested that the Black Hawk pilots could not see the jet they were sitting in, so visual separation led to disaster. It was also avoidable because ATC in the tower received an automatic warning 26 seconds before the collision, according to ABC News. If ATC had relayed that warning to the pilots, it almost certainly would have prevented the crash. For whatever reason, ATC never did.
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Compounding failures
A Black Hawk helicopter hovering over a grassland – Fox2air/Shutterstock
If it sounds like ATC wasn’t the best, there may be a reason for that. In 2018, the FAA lowered Reagan National Airport’s facility rating. This has the effect of lowering the minimum experience for ATCs there, reducing tower staff salaries and thus driving away top-level talent.
There’s another reason the Black Hawk pilots may have inadvertently put themselves in harm’s way: They didn’t know how high they were. In a sentence I can’t believe is real, it says the altimeters on the Black Hawks are woefully inaccurate, anywhere from 200 feet away. I’m a humble writer, but this seems like a huge design flaw in the plane. Oh, and apparently, this error isn’t mentioned in pilot training or the helicopter’s manual.
Additionally, Army protocol meant the helicopter had switched off its location-broadcasting system, called ADS-B Out. There is a push in Congress for a mandate to switch the system to permanent, but the fate of the Rotor Act is uncertain. But that doesn’t matter unless the other aircraft in question also has a system for receiving information called ADS-B IN. Very few have it installed, as it is not mandatory. In this case, if both aircraft had the correct technology and switched it on, it would certainly have prevented the crash. The NTSB has recommended mandating ADS-B a full 17 times in the last 20 years, but here we are.
Overloaded airspace
An Alaska Airlines jet comes in for landing at Burbank International Airport – Alexander Feder/Shutterstock
In the long run, a big part of the issue is the simple fact that air travel grows over time. This means more and more planes are in the air at the same time, and closer to the airport, they all funnel into a smaller number of runways. Reagan National Airport’s main runway is actually the busiest in America; which forces the airport to divert much of its traffic to the backup runway. Landing paths for that backup runway intersect with helicopter runways. I think you can see the problem here. This is exactly where the accident happened. If you live in LA, you’ll be happy to know that Hollywood Burbank Airport and Van Nuys Airport are the next worst intersections for plane and helicopter traffic, according to Politico.
Implementing system-wide fixes for our national airspace will take a long time. The NTSB has dozens of them, but it’s not up to them to adopt them or not. The FAA needs to agree, or Congress needs to act. Also, there needs to be funding. Meanwhile, the FAA has made some adjustments to flight paths around Reagan National Airport, as well as Van Nuys Airport. More will be required. Hopefully soon.
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