After jet collides with Black Hawk, NTSB urges helicopter restriction near DC airport
The National Transportation Safety Board recommended Tuesday that helicopters be prohibited from flying near Washington Reagan National Airport when planes are using using one of the airport’s three runways to take off and land.
The NTSB called its recommendation urgent and said it results from the investigation of a collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on Jan. 29. All 64 people on the plane and all three soldiers on the helicopter were killed when the two aircraft plunged into the Potomac River.
Failure to prohibit helicopters near Runway 33, where the commuter jet was trying to land, poses “an intolerable risk to aviation safety by increasing the chance of a midair collision,” the agency said in a report to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The NTSB said that flight data from the airport showed that commercial planes and helicopters came within 1 nautical mile of each other 15,214 times between October 2021 and December 2024. In 85 cases, the two aircraft came within 1,500 feet, with a vertical separation of less than 200 feet.
Another analysis of data from 2011 to 2024 found that the collision avoidance systems on commercial airliners were activated about once a month near the airport because a helicopter was too close. Two-thirds of those encounters occurred at night, the NTSB found, and over half of the time, the helicopter may have been flying higher than allowed.
That appears to be the case in the collision between American Eagle Flight 5342 and the Army helicopter in January.
According to a preliminary report released Tuesday, the NTSB says the helicopter was 278 feet above the river at the time of the crash, or 78 feet above the authorized altitude. The plane, a Bombardier CRJ, was at 313 feet and descending toward Runway 33.
The report confirms that Capt. Rebecca Lobach was in control of the helicopter, with an instructor pilot in the seat next to her. Lobach grew up in Rougemont in northern Durham County and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019.
The four-person crew of American Eagle Flight 5342 was based in Charlotte. The flight originated in Wichita, Kansas. The plane was operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines.
The report does not pinpoint a cause of the collision; the NTSB will likely spend another year or more investigating what happened before reaching those conclusions.
But the preliminary report highlights some of the missed communication between air traffic controllers and pilots of the helicopter just before the collision. At one point, the tower asks the Black Hawk if the CRJ was in sight, followed a few seconds later by another message from the tower telling the helicopter to “pass behind” the regional jet.
But the Black Hawk’s cockpit voice recorder suggests the entire message did not get through. It appears the phrase “pass behind the” was not received by the Black Hawk crew because the radio transmission was interrupted when someone in the helicopter pressed the mic key to communicate with the control tower.
The helicopter crew said it had the jet in sight and requested “visual separation,” an indication that they would avoid getting too close. About 15 seconds later, the aircraft collided.
After the crash, the FAA prohibited helicopters from flying over the Potomac River near the airport, except for life-saving medical, active law enforcement, air defense or presidential transport missions, according to the NTSB. Those restrictions are set to expire at the end of the month.
This story was originally published March 11, 2025 at 5:48 PM with the headline "After jet collides with Black Hawk, NTSB urges helicopter restriction near DC airport."
