In the 10 years before the Jan. 29 midair collision near Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people, an analysis by The Washington Post concluded there were troubling signs of potentially serious safety issues in the airspace around the crowded airport.
Many pilots and aviation professionals have been sounding the alarm to the Federal Aviation Administration about the high number of military, government and private helicopters flying on the busy corridors along the river, often very close to passenger jets landing and taking off.
“This series of events over a 10-year period are starting to paint a picture and somebody should look at this picture and decide, is there something wrong?” Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor Mike McCormick told WTOP.
McCormick, who is also an air traffic control expert, added that after looking into the details of what happened, “I came to the recognition that this is something that should have been and could have been prevented.”
The Washington Post analysis found that airline pilots reported 104 cockpit warnings to the FAA about a potential collision with a helicopter that advised the jet pilots to take evasive action to avoid a crash. Since 2013, the FAA has investigated six near-midair collisions involving helicopters near Reagan National, including the night before the Jan. 29 crash, when another passenger plane had to abort its landing after controllers issued a warning about a nearby helicopter, the analysis said.
It is not known whether the controller managing those aircraft the night before was the same controller who was on duty when the crash occurred.
“This was a precursor event,” said Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor and aviation crash investigator Bill Waldock, who was not part of The Washington Post’s analysis. “This is the type of event where you analyze everything.”
Some of the data will come from what’s known as the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, which is mandatory in passenger planes flown in the U.S. The system automatically communicates with all aircraft equipped with a transponder within 12 miles. It relays the position of the traffic, including altitude and airspeed and it calculates their trajectories to warn of a potential collision.
If two aircraft were on a collision course, it would give pilots an audible warning announcement, and then as the aircraft get closer, it would escalate the alert until actions are taken to avoid a conflict.
However, the system is less effective at lower altitudes, and it is not designed to provide course corrections below 1,000 feet.
The Jan. 29 collision occurred at an estimated 325 feet and air traffic control audiotapes indicate the pilots in both aircraft were given advisories from controllers to be aware of traffic. The helicopter pilot acknowledged seeing the larger jet, but it is not clear whether the pilot was referencing the landing aircraft or another one that had just taken off and can be seen on video of the crash.
“Flying in the D.C. airspace is like operating a very large ballet, each performer has a very specific thing to do and in a very specific time frame, then the system works,” Waldock said. “But, if one person gets out of place, it can disrupt the whole system and there can be a catastrophic failure. At Reagan, you are operating in a zero-tolerance environment.”
The FAA sets the airspace rules for the entire country and, in the wake of the collision, has put tighter restrictions on helicopter flights near Reagan National, and calls are growing to make those new rules permanent.
“The FAA is doing their own parallel investigation and while they support the NTSB in their larger, more detailed investigation, they’re already looking at what happened and what can be done, what immediate things can be done to mitigate the risk. That’s what we’ve seen by the shutdown of helicopter Route Four by the Federal Aviation Administration, because they already identified we need to take some more immediate action,” McCormick said.
“I am almost certain that there’s going to be changes in the helicopter routes, how the routes are operated, how the routes are controlled, and how the routes were flown.”
The Black Hawk was flying on a training mission along Helicopter Route Four when the crash occurred.
It is expected that the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report on the crash will be finished and released in a few weeks, but the final report, which will conclude the probable cause and likely recommendations to prevent a further collision, is not expected until at least a year from the time of the crash.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
