Washington– So many things went wrong on Jan. 29, contributing to the deadliest plane crash on American soil since 2001, that the National Transportation Safety Board is unlikely to pinpoint a single cause for the collision between a plane and a military helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people at a hearing Tuesday.
Instead, investigators will detail what they found that played a role in the accident, and the board will recommend changes to help prevent a similar tragedy. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration actually took the temporary restrictions it imposed after the accident and made them permanent to ensure planes and helicopters never again share the same airspace around Reagan National Airport.
Victims’ family members hope these suggestions will not be ignored in the same way that many previous NTSB recommendations have been ignored. Tim Lilly, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines plane, said he hopes officials in Congress and the administration will make changes now instead of waiting until another disaster strikes.
“Instead of writing flight rules in blood, let’s start writing them in data,” said Lilly, a pilot who earlier in his career flew Black Hawk helicopters in the Washington area. “Because all the data was there to show that this accident would have happened. This accident could have been completely prevented.”
Over the past year, the National Transportation Safety Board has already highlighted a number of factors that contributed to the crash, including a poorly designed helicopter’s path next to Reagan Airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet (23.7 meters) higher than it should have been, warnings that the FAA had ignored in previous years, and the Army’s move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopter’s location more clearly.
The D.C. crash was the first of a number of high-profile crashes and close calls throughout 2025 that have the public concerned, but the total number of crashes last year was actually the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with 1,405 crashes nationwide.
Experts say flying remains the safest way to travel because of all the overlapping layers of precautions built into the system, but many of these safety measures failed at the same time on January 29.
Here is some of what we learned about the incident:
The helicopter’s trajectory did not ensure sufficient separation
The route along the Potomac River that the Black Hawk was following that night allowed the helicopters and planes to get within 75 feet (23 m) of each other as the aircraft touched down on the airport’s secondary runway that typically handles less than 5% of the flights landing at Reagan. This distance was only guaranteed when the helicopter stopped flying along the river bank, but the official route did not require this.
Normally, air traffic controllers work to keep planes at least 500 feet (152 meters) apart to keep them safe, so the tiny separation on Route 4 poses what National Aviation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called “an intolerable risk to aviation safety.”
Controllers at Reagan also had a habit of asking pilots to watch other planes themselves and maintain visual separation as they tried to squeeze in more planes to land on what the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority called the busiest runway in the country. The Federal Aviation Administration discontinued the practice after the accident.
That night, a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots if the plane was in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked to agree to visual separation so they could use their eyes to maintain distance. But in investigative hearings last summer, board members questioned how well the crew was able to spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were looking in the right place.
The Black Hawk was flying at very high altitudes
The American Airlines plane, flying from Wichita, Kansas, hit the helicopter 278 feet (85 meters) above the river, but the Black Hawk was never supposed to fly above 200 feet (61 meters) as it passed the airport, according to the official route.
Before investigators revealed how high the helicopter was, Tim Lilley was asking tough questions about it in some of the first meetings NTSB officials held with families. His background as a pilot gave him detailed knowledge of the issues.
“We had a moral mandate because we had insight into what happened,” said Lilly, who began meeting with top lawmakers in Congress, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Army officials shortly after the accident to press for changes. “We didn’t want to become apologists for the accident, but we couldn’t shirk responsibility.”
The NTSB said the Black Hawk pilots may not have realized how high the helicopter was because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude recorded by the flight data recorder.
Investigators tested the altimeters of three other Black Hawks of the same model from the same Army unit and found similar discrepancies.
Previous warnings and worrying statements were ignored
Federal Aviation Administration controllers have been warning about risks created by helicopter traffic around Reagan Airport at least since 2022.
The NTSB found that there were 85 near misses between aircraft and helicopters around the airport in the three years prior to the accident as well as more than 15,000 near misses. Pilots reported crash alarms going off in their cockpits at least once a month.
Officials declined to add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to be careful when they used the secondary runway at Reagan Airport that the plane was trying to use before the collision.
Rachel Ferris said it was difficult to hear about all the known concerns that were never addressed before the accident that claimed the lives of her cousin Peter Livingston, his wife Donna and two young daughters, Everly and Aledia, who were promising skiers.
“It became clear very quickly that this incident should never have happened,” Ferris said. “And as someone who is not familiar with aviation and how our aviation system works, we were hearing things over and over again that I think really shocked people, really surprised them.”
Copyright © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.