NTSB Blames System Failures in Reagan National Midair Crash That Killed 67

A routine runway change, then impact

The commercial jet had already slipped below the clouds and was following the dark ribbon of the Potomac River when the controller at Reagan National Airport asked its crew a question they had answered many times before.

“American 5342, can you take Runway 33?” the tower controller said, offering a last-minute switch to the shorter crosswind runway that juts toward the river.

The pilots agreed. A few hundred feet above the icy water, a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was also tracking along the river on a nighttime training flight, its crew wearing night-vision goggles. For years, helicopters and airliners had flown that same corridor, separated by little more than a sliver of sky.

At 8:47 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2025, the space between them disappeared.

NTSB: A chain of compounding failures

On Tuesday, nearly a year later, the National Transportation Safety Board met in Washington to determine the probable cause of the midair collision that killed all 67 people aboard American Airlines Flight 5342 and the Black Hawk.

The board’s findings, previewed in investigative documents and court filings and formally adopted at the public meeting, point less to a single error than to a system that allowed jets and helicopters to come within tens of feet of each other over the nation’s capital for years.

“This tragedy was not the result of one person’s mistake,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a briefing ahead of the meeting. “It was the result of multiple, compounding failures in how we designed and managed the airspace around Reagan National.”

The Jan. 29, 2025, crash was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in New York in 2001. It was the first fatal accident involving a Bombardier CRJ700-series aircraft and the first fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial passenger airline since 2009.

The aircraft and the victims

American Airlines Flight 5342, operated by PSA Airlines under the American Eagle brand, had departed Wichita, Kansas, bound for Washington with 60 passengers and four crew members.

On board were 28 people tied to the U.S. figure-skating community, including young skaters ages 11 to 16 and four coaches, among them 1994 world pairs champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.

The Army helicopter, a UH-60L Black Hawk from the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was flying a routine night-vision-goggle proficiency check along established helicopter routes that follow the Potomac. Three soldiers were aboard.

What investigators say happened

Investigators say conditions at Reagan National that evening were typical for winter: low clouds, gusty winds and the airport operating in “north flow,” with most jets landing on Runway 1.

As Flight 5342 approached, the tower offered the change to Runway 33, which extends across the river at a different angle. The crew accepted and began setting up for a visual approach, descending along a shallow three-degree glidepath toward the runway threshold.

At the same time, the Black Hawk was flying northbound along designated Helicopter Route 1 before transitioning to Route 4, which runs near the eastern shoreline of the Potomac just east of the Runway 33 approach path. That segment of Route 4 is published for use at or below 200 feet above mean sea level.

According to radar data and cockpit recordings released in the NTSB docket, a DCA tower controller saw the two aircraft converging and radioed the helicopter to point out the approaching jet. The Black Hawk crew reported the airliner in sight and asked to maintain visual separation, an air traffic control technique that shifts responsibility for avoiding a collision from controllers to pilots once they confirm they can see each other.

The controller agreed.

In the final minute before impact, the regional jet continued descending through about 300 feet above the river at an airspeed of roughly 130 to 140 mph. The Black Hawk’s radio altimeter, which measures height above the surface, indicated about 278 feet—well above the 200-foot limit for that section of the route.

The NTSB’s analysis concluded that a miscalibrated barometric altimeter led the helicopter crew to believe they were still within authorized altitude.

Fifteen seconds before the collision, the Black Hawk’s evaluator suggested a sharp left turn toward the east bank of the river, apparently to widen the distance from the jet. The maneuver was not carried out. Seven seconds before impact, Flight 5342 rolled out on its final alignment with Runway 33, placing it directly in line with the helicopter’s path.

The two aircraft struck each other about half a mile short of the runway threshold, at roughly 300 feet above the water. The helicopter broke apart in midair. The regional jet lost most of a wing and plunged into a spiraling descent before shattering on the surface of the Potomac.

Rescue boats, fire crews and divers from the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland responded within minutes, battling darkness, near-freezing water and river ice. By the next morning, officials said there were no signs of survivors. Recovery teams eventually located and identified all 67 victims.

A hazardous design in one of the most controlled airspaces

From the outset, NTSB investigators focused as much on the design and management of the airspace as on the actions of the crews.

The capital region is among the most tightly controlled in the world, encircled by a Special Flight Rules Area with an even more restricted inner Flight-Restricted Zone imposed after the Sept. 11 attacks. All aircraft operating in that airspace must be in contact with air traffic control and, in most cases, must be squawking a transponder code that allows them to be tracked.

Yet the Potomac’s low-level helicopter routes, especially Route 4, threaded close to the approach path for Runway 33.

NTSB simulations showed that a helicopter flying legally at 200 feet on Route 4’s eastern shoreline segment would have as little as 75 feet of vertical separation from an airliner on a standard glidepath to Runway 33. Because Route 4 had no defined lateral boundaries, a helicopter drifting toward the center of the river could erase even that buffer.

In an urgent safety recommendation issued in March 2025, the NTSB said the configuration posed “an intolerable risk to aviation safety” and called on the Federal Aviation Administration to close the Route 4 segment between Hains Point and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge whenever Runways 15 or 33 were in use, and to redesign helicopter operations near the airport.

Near misses, political pressures and surveillance limits

The board’s investigation also documented a pattern of near misses in the years before the crash. Internal FAA data showed at least 85 documented near-midair incidents and more than 15,000 automated “proximity alerts” between helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in the Reagan National area over three years. Controllers and pilots had repeatedly raised concerns about relying on visual separation in such constrained airspace, especially at night.

One internal FAA memo, later entered into the NTSB docket, recounted that proposed changes to reduce those conflicts were considered “too political,” in part because limiting arrivals or rerouting aircraft at National could anger members of Congress who prize direct access to the airport.

At the same time, the Army Black Hawk involved in the crash was not broadcasting its position via Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B Out), a GPS-based system that transmits an aircraft’s location to controllers and nearby aircraft. While military aircraft have sometimes been allowed to disable ADS-B for security reasons, the NTSB found that doing so in the crowded airspace around Reagan National reduced the resolution of surveillance data and could limit the effectiveness of conflict-alert tools.

Legal fallout and families’ advocacy

The U.S. government has already acknowledged significant responsibility. In a December 2025 filing responding to a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of passenger Casey Crafton and others, Justice Department attorneys wrote that the United States “breached its duty of care” and that this breach “proximately caus[ed] the tragic accident on January 29, 2025.”

The government conceded that the Black Hawk crew “failed to maintain adequate vigilance” and that the DCA tower controller did not fully comply with rules requiring pilots to be clearly informed when visual separation is being applied. At the same time, the filing disputed plaintiffs’ claims that the airspace itself was an “accident waiting to happen,” arguing that the system could be operated safely when procedures were followed.

Families of the victims have pushed for broader changes. Crafton’s widow, Rachel, has become a lead plaintiff in litigation against the FAA, the Army, PSA Airlines and American Airlines, alleging systemic negligence.

Relatives of the young skaters and their coaches have formed advocacy groups seeking permanent helicopter restrictions around National and legislation they call the ROTOR Act, which would require collision-avoidance and tracking systems on helicopters to be active at all times, with narrow exceptions.

“I don’t want my children to grow up thinking this was just bad luck,” Crafton said in a statement released by her attorneys. “This was a failure of a system that was supposed to keep people safe.”

FAA and Army changes, with national implications

The FAA, under pressure from the NTSB and Congress, has moved to overhaul operations around Washington. Within days of the crash, the agency imposed temporary limits on helicopter flights over the Potomac between the Memorial Bridge and the Wilson Bridge, exempting only medical, law enforcement, air defense and presidential missions.

In March 2025, it permanently closed the stretch of Helicopter Route 4 the Black Hawk was using and banned most nonessential helicopter operations around National.

Last week, the FAA took another step, publishing an interim final rule that makes many of those changes permanent. The rule bans shared airspace between helicopters and airplanes in a defined zone near Reagan National, prohibits the use of visual separation between aircraft within five miles of the airport, and requires all military aircraft operating in the region to broadcast ADS-B Out, with limited exceptions.

The Army has separately suspended some Black Hawk training flights in the area, launched a fleet-wide review of barometric altimeter calibration and tightened rules on when ADS-B can be turned off.

The changes go beyond Washington. Safety advocates and aviation experts say the Potomac collision has prompted a re-examination of helicopter corridors near other busy airports and urban skylines, including in New York, Southern California and Houston. The crash has also raised questions about how future electric air taxis and other urban air-mobility vehicles will share the sky with airliners.

A tragedy with echoes on the Potomac

For Washington, the disaster revived memories of another winter day on the Potomac: Jan. 13, 1982, when Air Florida Flight 90 slammed into the 14th Street Bridge and the river, killing 78 people. Many of the same agencies that responded then were back on the ice-choked water four decades later.

Homendy told families that the board’s work is aimed at ensuring there is no third such day.

“The 67 people who died over the Potomac put their trust in a system that is supposed to anticipate and manage risk, especially here in the nation’s capital,” she said. “These findings and recommendations are about honoring that trust and making sure we do not ask for their lives in vain.”