Is it still safe to fly? | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on March 12, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: On January 29th, a midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River shocked the nation. The crash killed 67 people and called into question the safety of air traffic control operations. Just a few days following the crash, President Donald Trump placed the blame on DEI initiatives, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and even the pilot of the Army Black Hawk helicopter. On Tuesday, the preliminary findings from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the tragedy were released. What did that report reveal? Is it still safe to fly? Paste BN Aviation Reporter Zach Wichter joins The Excerpt to discuss findings from the report.
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Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Hello and welcome to a special episode of The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. On January 29th, a midair collision between an army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River shocked the nation. The crash killed 67 people and called into question the safety of Air Traffic Control operations. Just a few days following the crash, president Donald Trump placed the blame on DEI initiatives, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, and even the pilot of the Army Black Hawk Helicopter. Yesterday, the preliminary findings from the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into the tragedy were released. So what did that report reveal, and is it still safe to fly? Paste BN aviation reporter Zach Wichter now joins me to discuss findings from the report. Thanks for having on, Zach.
Zach Wichter:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And right off the top, I just want to address something that was in your introduction, which is to say that flying is absolutely still extremely safe. I have been saying this to basically everyone who will listen since this D.C. crash, and then obviously also the Toronto incident happened. These are tragedies and they're scary to see, obviously, and we're all very grateful that everyone on the plane in Toronto survived. And the industry learns from every accident and incident to make itself safer. So we're going to get into all of that today, I'm sure, but I did just want to say right off the top that people should not be afraid of getting on planes after this.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I appreciate that, Zach. I think that'll put a lot of folks at ease, at least in this moment. But before we get to the latest from this NTSB investigation into the cause of this collision and some of what they've found, can you just refresh our memory on what happened on that really tragic day?
Zach Wichter:
Essentially, as you said in the introduction, there was a regional jet that was flying an American Airlines flight. It was operated by PS., but that is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines, so they fly kind of small jets for American Airlines. So this jet was coming in for a routine landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just outside of D.C. And it was crossing a helicopter flight path, which is also designated kind of the helicopter was more or less where it was supposed to be. The NTSB's preliminary report addressed some of the issues that led up to this incident, but we still don't know exactly everything about the TikTok of what happened. What we do know is that the helicopter collided with the airplane and everyone on board, both aircraft, lost their lives when it crashed into the Potomac River.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Zach, let's get into some of these preliminary findings from the NTSB. What did they say in this report?
Zach Wichter:
So what the NTSB has recommended urgently is a restriction on helicopter flights around DCA. Essentially, the way that this helicopter corridor outside of DCA operates is that helicopters have a restricted altitude, and that's meant to prevent these kinds of conflicts between helicopters and commercial planes that are landing at the airport. What seems to have happened here is that the helicopter pilots may have had some bad data on their instruments as to their altitude, and so they appear to have been flying slightly higher than the corridor for helicopters in that area is supposed to be restricted at. And that may have been a major contributing factor into this incident.
What the report from the NTSB also said is that there have been thousands of these kinds of conflicts in the area over the past few years. They looked at the period from 2011 through 2024 and said that there has been at least one warning to pilots about this kind of potential collision every month in that period. Between October 2021 and December 2024, there were almost a million flight operations at DCA and in that time there were more than 15,000 so-called loss of separation incidents between helicopters and planes. So that's a time when the helicopters and the planes are in closer proximity in that airspace than they're supposed to be allowed to be based on the regulations. And so the NTSB really flagged this as extremely concerning and recommended some immediate changes to the way that helicopter operations happen around DCA.
Taylor Wilson:
I have to say, Zach, it seems pretty shocking to me that nobody previously flagged danger here between helicopters and some of the airspace commercial planes regularly use. What was your reaction here?
Zach Wichter:
Well, that's the really interesting part about all of this is these reports that the NTSB flagged in its preliminary findings from this investigation suggest that people were reporting this issue and that the FAA already had this data and just wasn't acting on it. So it remains to be seen why the agency that's regulating this airspace wasn't doing anything with the information at its disposal. Why they weren't more concerned? Why they weren't acting on these reports that they had received? But it's not exactly accurate to say that no one had flagged this because these reports had been submitted, it was just that they hadn't been acted upon. And we don't have a clear picture as to why that is, that no one kind of noticed this data and tried to make changes before this kind of incident actually occurred.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as I mentioned at the top, Zach, there was immediate finger pointing really from the Trump administration regarding the role of Air Traffic Control in the crash. And the FAA had previously reported that they'd been suffering from staffing issues, was that a factor here? Do we know that at this time?
Zach Wichter:
I'll answer this question in a few parts. What I would say is that staffing at the FAA is a known issue. The agency has been chronically understaffed for years, and various administrations have made all kinds of different efforts to address the staffing issues at the FAA. That said, I caution anyone who listens to me to not point fingers in the immediate aftermath of an incident. And so that kind of speculation in the hours and days after a fatal crash is really not helpful, generally. There are many factors that go into every disaster that happens with aircraft, and the NTSB is kind of the gold standard investigative body in the world for looking into these kinds of incidents and really figuring out what happened. So I always caution people to just let the investigative process play out, to not kind of speculate about what may have gone into contributing to a disaster like this.
That said, now that we have the NTSB preliminary report, it does not appear that Air Traffic Control staffing played a role in this incident. What we do know is that the pilots of the helicopter may have missed an instruction from the air traffic controller in the tower at DCA because of conflicting radio traffic. The NTSB report suggested that the pilots of the helicopter may have been trying to broadcast to the tower at the same time that the tower was trying to broadcast to them. And because of that, they may not have heard a crucial instruction as to how the tower wanted the helicopter to navigate around the plane that it was coming into conflict with. But as far as we can tell from all of the reports that have been released so far, the air traffic controllers did exactly what they were supposed to do and the tower was not short-staffed in an unusual way. A lot of these towers are currently operating at suboptimal staffing, but that doesn't mean that the staffing that they have would've been unusual to the air traffic controllers on duty that night.
Taylor Wilson:
And, Zach, at the time that we're talking, do we know if President Trump has responded to these latest findings from the investigation?
Zach Wichter:
I have not heard as of this recording about any response from the president directly. What I can say is that his administration and Secretary Duffy at the Department of Transportation has listened to the NTSB's recommendations and is implementing more permanent changes to the way helicopter traffic operates around DCA.
Taylor Wilson:
So we've seen the push for mass layoffs of federal employees from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Zach, has DOGE, this Musk Department of government efficiency, revealed plans for any cuts within the FAA. And would this impact air traffic controllers specifically?
Zach Wichter:
So there already have been cuts in the FAA of administrative staff, support staff, that sort of thing. DOGE and the Trump administration insists that these cuts are not going to affect the Air Traffic Control roster of employees specifically, but it remains to be seen. These cuts have been fairly sweeping across agencies and often seem to have a broader scope than maybe originally intended. So we don't know exactly what's going to happen to FAA staffing writ large. Again, the administration has said that they do not intend these cuts to hit air traffic controllers, but I would say we just kind of need to wait and see. That said, the representatives of the unions and those who are familiar with the way that the FAA operates have said publicly that any cuts at the FAA could ultimately undermine safety. Because if you cut support staff and you cut administrators, those duties still have to be performed and so it stretches the remaining employees at the agency more thinly. And that just makes it more likely for things to slip between the cracks.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So, Zach, where do we go from here? Is there anything else to keep an eye out for when it comes to this specific investigation and just kind of some of the broader issues we've been talking about?
Zach Wichter:
I would say, we're still going to wait on the NTSB's final report. What was issued yesterday was a preliminary report and doesn't contain all of the findings or all of the facts about this incident. The final report is probably going to take a year or more to come out, so we won't have the truly full picture of what happened until that time. That said, I've heard from advocates that one of the concerns that this incident highlighted is about helicopter operations around commercial airports more generally, not just at DCA. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's an issue that gets more focus going forward. But otherwise, I think we just need to let the process play out, see what other recommendations the NTSB comes up with, and see how the Trump administration and other regulators enact those recommendations. NTSB recommendations are non-binding, it falls to the regulators to implement them.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Paste BN aviation reporter Zach Wichter joining us here on the excerpt. Thank you so much, Zach.
Zach Wichter:
Yep, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Excerpt.