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Federal Investigators identified a multitude of errors and systemic safety lapses as the primary causes of the midair collision last year between a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ 700 and a Sikorsky UH-60 Army Helicopter that killed all 67 people on board.
"We should be angry. This was 100% preventable. We have issued recommendations in the past that were applicable here. We have talked about seeing a void for well over five decades," NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a public hearing on Tuesday. "It's shameful. I don't want to have to be here years from now, looking at other families that had to suffer such devastating loss."
The collision occurred Jan. 29, 2025, over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), as American Airlines flight 5342 was on final approach, and the helicopter was conducting a nighttime training mission. Investigators said the flight was an annual evaluation for the pilot while using night vision goggles.
The collision marked the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in more than two decades. Investigators cited a breakdown in communications, misidentified aircraft visuals, overreliance on the use of visual separation, and congested airspace as contributing factors.During the daylong hearing, the NTSB presented animations depicting the moments leading up to the collision, along with transcripts from both the jet, the helicopter, and the DCA air traffic controller.
The transcripts showed that after approving the helicopter crew to travel along Helicopter Route One to Helicopter Route Four to Davison Army Airfield, the local controller had no communication with the crew for 12 minutes.
About five minutes before the collision, Flight 5342 was handed off to the DCA tower, where the local controller instructed the crew to switch from Runway 1 to Runway 33, a change that crossed Helicopter Route Four. The flight crew accepted. Investigators said there was no further communication with the jet before the collision.
The tower warned the helicopter pilots about Flight 5342, and the crew said they would avoid it. However, investigators found a partial radio transmission block prevented the helicopter crew from hearing the controller's instruction to pass behind the jet. Instead, the crew received a partial message and responded that they had an aircraft in sight and requested visual separation.
Investigators determined the controller did not timely notify the jet crew about the helicopter's proximity and that the helicopter pilots may have been looking at the wrong aircraft when they believed they had visual contact.
Although the controller expressed concern about the aircraft's converging paths to investigators, no safety alert was issued with updated traffic advisory information or alternate course actions that could have allowed either crew to avoid the collision.
At the time, the local control and helicopter control positions were combined with one controller communicating with six airplanes and five helicopters. Investigators said the workload reduced the controller's situational awareness.
Animations shown during the hearing also demonstrated the visibility challenges the pilots may have experienced, including glare from city lights, making it harder to spot each other. The animations showed the windshields and the restricted views of the helicopter crew's night vision goggles, as well.
A narrow vertical buffer, which is at most 75 feet between the helicopter route and commercial flight path, was also identified as a hazard.
"This helicopter route shouldn't have been there in the first place," said NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy. "This was a terrible design of the airspace."
The NTSB said the hazard was repeatedly raised to the FAA by aviation safety experts long before the crash.
"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," said Homendy.
Discrepancies in barometric altitude readings in the helicopter could have also led the crew to believe they were flying lower than they actually were. Test flights after the collision showed readings that were 80 to 130 feet lower than true altitude.
After about 10 hours, the hearing concluded with the NTSB's probable cause and recommendations.
The NTSB had determined the probable cause of this accident was the FAA's placement of a helicopter route in proximity to a runway approach path. Their failure to regularly review and evaluate helicopter routes and available data, their failure to act on recommendations to mitigate the risk of a mid-air collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and the air traffic system's overreliance on visual separation.
The board said the Army helicopter crew failed to maintain effective visual separation, leading directly to the collision. Additional causes included air traffic controllers losing situational awareness amid heavy workloads, inadequate traffic advisories, and the absence of safety alerts to both flight crews. Investigators also found the Army failed to ensure pilots understood barometric altimeter error tolerances, resulting in the helicopter flying above its maximum authorized route altitude.
Contributing factors included limitations in onboard collision alert systems, increasing traffic volumes, and scheduling practices that strained the airport's control tower staffing, as well as the Army's lack of a fully implemented safety management system. The NTSB also faulted the FAA for failing to implement past safety recommendations and for not fully integrating its own safety management processes, as well as for poor data sharing among federal agencies and aircraft operators.
The NTSB voted to approve 74 findings and 50 recommendations to prevent similar accidents in the future. 33 safety recommendations were issued to the FAA, eight to the U.S. Army.
Among the recommendations to the FAA, investigators urged limits on airline scheduling similar to those at New York's LaGuardia Airport, a reassessment of arrival rates at Reagan National, and new time-on-position limits and annual scenario-based training for air traffic controllers. The board also called for rerouting helicopters to ensure vertical separation from runway approaches and for adding helicopter route information to flight procedures to improve pilot awareness.
The NTSB recommended requiring ADS-B In and advanced collision-avoidance systems on both airplanes and helicopters, retrofitting existing aircraft with newer technology, and improving controller alerting and radio systems. Additional steps include creating a public database of near-miss encounters, strengthening real-time risk assessments, expanding data sharing among agencies, and increasing training on the limits of visual separation.
In a statement following the hearing, the FAA said it "values and appreciates the NTSB's expertise and input" and has already implemented urgent safety recommendations issued in March 2025.
The FAA stated it has reduced hourly plane arrivals at the airport from 36 to 30 since the crash and said it has worked to increase tower staff.
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