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The FAA repeatedly rejected improved safety measures before the deadly mid-air crash of an American Airlines plane and an Army Blackhawk helicopter over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last year — and failed to even properly test the air traffic controllers for drugs and alcohol afterwards, a damning hearing revealed Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration repeatedly came under fire during the National Transportation Safety Board’s public hearing on the on Jan. 29, 2025 collision in America’s most crowded airport, which killed 67 people — the deadliest US aviation disaster since 2001.
“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.”
Early in the hearing, lead NTSB investigator Brice Banning said that a working group of Reagan National air traffic controllers and helicopter pilots had previously begged the FAA to “deconflict” the travel routes around the airport — which allowed helicopters to fly just a few hundred feet below the takeoff and landing zones for passenger jets.
The agency refused.
Similarly, controllers’ concerns over unbearably high traffic volumes in the tangled airspace went unaddressed, Banning said.
“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,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.
“Repeated recommendations over the years.”
About 10 minutes before the collision, a controller had said he was “a little overwhelmed” when traffic grew to include five airplanes and five helicopters. He then reported it felt “manageable” after one or two helicopters left the airspace, NTSB investigator Katherine Wilson said.
But just 90 seconds before the crash, the traffic volume had increased to include 12 aircraft – a workload that “reduced” the controller’s “situational awareness,” Wilson said.
A video animation shown during the hearing showed how difficult it would have been for both pilots to see each other. The aircraft’s windshields and the helicopter crew’s night vision goggles would have further inhibited their visibility by narrowing the field of vision, investigators said.
Two people were reportedly escorted from the room in tears while the devastating animation played during the hearing, to which many attendees showed up in t-shirts depicting the crash victims’ names.
Other revelations from the hearing included that Reagan National controllers involved in the crash had never received Department of Transportation-mandated “Threat and Error Management Training,” nor were they tested for drugs and alcohol in the appropriate manner.
Following any aviation-related fatality, the DOT requires that controllers involved must be tested for alcohol within two hours of the incident, and for drugs, within four hours.
However, in this instance, controllers only underwent urine drug testing about 18 to 20 hours following the crash – and were never tested for alcohol, NTSB investigator Turan Kayagil revealed during the hearing.
“The [FAA Air Traffic Organization’s] delayed and inappropriate alcohol testing determination was due, in part, to inadequate ATO staff understanding of the DOT’s requirements for timely testing,” Kayagil said, noting that both testing measures violated the department’s regulations.
Although investigators don’t believe that drugs or alcohol played a role in the collision, “this is not the first time” that the ATO failed to follow testing requirements following a crash, Kayagil said.
The FAA was scrutinized yet again when investigators revealed the agency was unable to produce any records or evidence of a “terminal operations service area director,” or an airport staffer who was supposed to be responsible for conducting annual reviews of the DCA’s helicopter flight paths.
“We asked for that information and [FAA officials] were unable to provide that, or identify the individual” who had held that position, Banning said in response to Homendy’s question about whether there had been any annual reviews.
“We have no evidence of any of it,” he said.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, the NTSB had previously identified several key contributors to the crash, including the airport’s poorly designed helicopter route, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying nearly 80 feet higher than it was supposed to, and the Army had turned off a key system that would have broadcasted the helicopter’s location more clearly.
Last week, the FAA announced that temporary changes made after the crash to ensure helicopters and planes would no longer share the same airspace around the nation’s capital were made permanent.
English (US)