In a hearing scheduled as investigators prepare their final report on a deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C., the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to describe not one clear cause but a chain of contributing breakdowns involving how aircraft were routed, how separation was managed, and what guidance pilots received.
The collision involved an American Airlines jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk near Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29, 2025, killing 67 people, according to the Associated Press. Investigators told families at earlier meetings that the Board would focus on what they found that played a role in the crash and on recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy.
The hearing also comes after the Federal Aviation Administration acted quickly in the immediate aftermath of the crash and later made those restrictions permanent, the Associated Press reported. The changes are intended to keep planes and helicopters from sharing the same airspace around Reagan National Airport, an area families and safety advocates have said remains too congested for the margin for error they say the accident showed.
Tim Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines plane and who has piloted helicopters in the Washington area earlier in his career, said families want lawmakers and the administration to act on the NTSB’s suggestions rather than delay until another disaster. Lilley said, “Instead of writing aviation regulation in blood, let’s start writing it in data,” and added, “Because all the data was there to show this accident was going to happen. This accident was completely preventable.”
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy characterized the risk from the way controllers and crews were expected to maintain separation as “an intolerable risk to flight safety,” according to the Associated Press. Investigators said the helicopter route along the Potomac River that night did not ensure enough separation because the 75-foot (23-meter) margin could be maintained only when the helicopter stuck to flying along the riverbank, rather than being required by the official route.
The Associated Press report said NTSB investigators also focused on how the helicopter and the airliner ended up at different altitudes. The American Airlines plane collided with the helicopter 278 feet (85 meters) above the river, and the NTSB said the Black Hawk was not supposed to be above 200 feet (61 meters) as it passed by the airport. The NTSB said the helicopter pilots may not have realized how high they were because barometric altimeters they relied on were reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude recorded by the flight data recorder, and investigators tested similar altimeter discrepancies on other Black Hawks from the same Army unit.
Investigators also said that even as the airspace around Reagan became increasingly complex, safety concerns were known well before the crash. The Associated Press reported that FAA controllers had been warning about risks created by helicopter traffic around the airport at least since 2022, and that the NTSB found 85 near misses between planes and helicopters in the three years before the accident, along with more than 15,000 close-proximity events. The NTSB also said pilots reported collision alarms in their cockpits at least once a month and that officials did not add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to use caution when using the secondary runway that the airliner was trying to land on before the collision.
Families described shock at how many concerns they said were not addressed in advance. Rachel Feres, whose cousin Peter Livingston and his wife Donna were among the victims, said it “became very quickly clear that this crash should never have happened,” and added that as someone not familiar with how the aviation system works, her family felt they were “just hearing things over and over again that I think really, really shocked people, really surprised people,” according to the Associated Press.
While experts say air travel remains among the safest ways to travel, the Associated Press said the crash reflected how multiple layers of safety precautions failed at the same time. Investigators and families now are looking to the NTSB’s recommendations—alongside the FAA’s permanent restrictions—to translate what they say were preventable failures into changes that reduce the likelihood of similar collisions near Reagan National Airport.