D.C. Plane Crash That Killed 67 Was Completely Preventable, NTSB Chair Says

One year after a horrific mid-air collision killed 67 people over Washington, D.C., the head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) didn’t mince words: the tragedy was completely preventable and the blame lies squarely with the federal agencies that were supposed to stop it.

At a hearing on Tuesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy laid out the devastating truth behind the January 29, 2025 crash between an American Airlines passenger jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The collision sent both aircraft spiraling into the Potomac River, killing all 67 people on board, including three military crew members and 60 civilians many of them children and coaches returning from a figure skating event.

“100% preventable,” Homendy said plainly after the hearing. And the evidence supports her.

The core failure? The FAA ignored repeated warnings from air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport (DCA) that the airspace was dangerously overcrowded and poorly managed. For months leading up to the crash, frontline personnel raised red flags about the chaotic environment and close call after close call. Those warnings were buried by FAA leadership.

Key failures that led to the crash included:

• Only 75 feet of vertical separation between the helicopter and the descending commercial jet — far below the safe margin for mid-air operations.

• No reliable collision-avoidance technology on either aircraft.

• Faulty instruments on the helicopter, which misled the crew into thinking the plane was farther away and flying lower.

• Inaccurate FAA airspace maps that failed to clearly define helicopter routing near busy approach paths.

• A DCA air traffic controller working five helicopters and six airplanes—alone—for over five hours prior to the crash.

Let that sink in: a single controller, overwhelmed and outnumbered, was responsible for directing 11 aircraft in a tightly congested airspace. In the 18 minutes leading up to the collision, collision alert warnings can be heard nine times on tower recordings—yet no intervention occurred.

Despite this chaos, the FAA failed to conduct immediate drug and alcohol testing of controllers after the crash, as required by federal law. While no evidence suggests any impairment, the lack of timely testing shows yet another breakdown in basic procedure.

Homendy was visibly furious:
“How is it that no one, absolutely no one in the FAA did the work to figure out there was only 75 feet, at best, of vertical separation?”

It’s a brutal question. And like too many others involving federal bureaucracy, the answer is silence and shifting responsibility.

The human cost of that silence is staggering. Among the dead were youth figure skaters and their coaches. U.S. Olympian Maxim Naumov, who lost both parents in the crash, will compete in the upcoming Winter Olympics in their honor.

This wasn’t an unpredictable freak accident. It was the result of systemic negligence.

Since the crash, the FAA has banned non-essential helicopter flights near Reagan and shut down the helicopter route used that night. But those steps—taken after the worst aviation disaster in the capital in decades—feel like too little, too late.

Here’s what the American public deserves to know:

• The FAA had repeated warnings and did nothing.

• The air traffic controller was understaffed and overworked.

• Lives were lost not because of pilot error, but because of Washington bureaucracy’s total indifference to frontline concerns.

This was a disaster born from complacency—and a culture of cover-up. And unless that changes, it could happen again.

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