FAA Admits Air Traffic Control Error in Deadly DC Crash

After months of speculation and bureaucratic finger-pointing, the Federal Aviation Administration has admitted that one of its air traffic controllers failed to warn a commercial airliner about an approaching Army helicopter before the tragic midair collision that killed 67 people over Washington, D.C. in January.

In a moment of rare candor, FAA official Nick Fuller confirmed during National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearings on Thursday that the controller at Ronald Reagan National Airport should have informed the PSA Airlines flight from Wichita that a Black Hawk helicopter was on a visual flight path converging directly into their own.

“The controller should have told the PSA crew that the targets were likely to merge,” Fuller stated.

The admission underscores a much larger systemic problem that’s been boiling under the radar for years: America’s busiest air corridors are being run on the edge of collapse with overworked controllers, outdated safety protocols, and pressure from commercial airlines creating a perfect storm.

Here’s what we’ve now learned from the NTSB hearings:

• The air traffic controller was juggling 21 aircraft in the 10 minutes leading up to the crash far beyond safe standards.

• Helicopters were routinely told to “see and avoid” airliners without proper radar or communication support a tactic now revealed as wildly unsafe.

• The Black Hawk helicopter was flying visually and may have misunderstood tower instructions, failing to identify the jet until seconds before impact.

• American Airlines’ aggressive scheduling overloaded the system, with one FAA manager admitting, “I don’t know how American has this much pull… but it’s a wink-wink, people know what’s going on.”

• The primary controller had already told investigators he was overwhelmed 15 minutes before the fatal crash.

Perhaps most damning: runway 33 a shorter and more dangerous runway that forces jets to make sharp turns was being used that night as a “relief valve” to keep up with traffic. The PSA flight was rerouted to it at the last minute, putting it directly on a collision course with the Army helicopter.

In other words, this wasn’t just an error. It was the result of a reckless and unsustainable system.

• FAA staffing at the tower was below safe minimums, with only 19 of 26 assigned controllers available.

• The FAA had long been warned about excessive dependence on visual separation and outdated tactics like “squeeze play” a jargon term for cramming flights in with minimal separation.

• 85 near-misses had already been reported at the same airport in the past three years, and nothing changed.

The consequences were tragic, predictable, and entirely preventable.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the situation “unacceptable,” and the FAA has since imposed tighter restrictions on visual separation but that’s cold comfort for the families of 67 innocent people who paid the ultimate price for Washington’s bureaucratic indifference and airlines’ bottom-line obsession.

Once again, the Biden-era FAA was asleep at the wheel while Americans died in the skies above the capital.

The question now isn’t just what went wrong we already know the answer. The real question is who will be held accountable?

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