NTSB urges limits on helicopters near Reagan National airport after fatal crash

Federal officials investigating the fatal air collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January are calling for permanent restrictions on military helicopters to make the area safer for commercial passengers.

In a preliminary report Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board urged the Federal Aviation Administration to “prohibit operations” and identify alternative routes for helicopters flying between Hains Point and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge when passenger jets are landing or taking off at runways 15 and 33.

The Jan. 29 nighttime collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet killed 67 people as the airliner descended over the Potomac River to land on runway 33.

The NTSB report said the helicopter likely collided with the jet nearly 300 feet from the ground as it strayed well above its 200-foot limit during an annual test flight.

Investigators said the proposed changes should help resolve a long-standing problem of helicopters flying too close to commercial jets landing at the airport.

“Review of information gathered from voluntary safety reporting programs along with FAA data regarding encounters between helicopters and commercial aircraft near DCA from 2011 through 2024 indicated that a vast majority of the reported events occurred on approach to landing,” the report said.

An NTSB review of 944,179 commercial arrivals and departures at the airport from October 2021 through December 2024 found 15,214 near collisions between commercial airplanes and helicopters with less than 400 feet of vertical separation.

Of those, 85 recorded events involved a lateral separation of less than 1,500 feet and a vertical separation of less than 200 feet.

“In over half of these instances, the helicopter may have been above the route altitude restriction,” the report said. “Two-thirds of the events occurred at night.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at an afternoon press conference that the helicopter route has been closed since the collision. He pledged to follow the NTSB recommendations to eliminate it permanently and develop alternative routes for helicopters in the region.

He said it was time to “learn from this air disaster” by addressing problems pilots had discussed for years.

“To see that we had this kind of risk at DCA makes me angry,” Mr. Duffy said.

Citing infrastructure dating to the 1960s, he promised to ask Congress for funding to update the technology used in airline safety and air traffic control operations nationwide.

“We’re going to lay out our plan to actually do it really quickly,” Mr. Duffy said.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Reagan and Washington Dulles International airports, said it “is not permitted to discuss information or details about the incident or its investigation.”

The office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, declined to comment on the NTSB recommendations.

The NTSB is continuing to investigate the cause of the crash, the report said.

Some industry veterans said the preliminary findings highlight the remarkable luck of airline passengers during landings at Reagan Airport over several decades.

“Given there were more than 15,000 recent low-altitude helicopter-aircraft proximity alerts, and the slim margins, it is incomprehensible that this policy and practice continued for so long,” said Robert W. Mann, a former American Airlines executive and independent airline consultant based in Port Washington, New York.

Federal lawmakers have criticized local officials over the past two months for ignoring complaints about near misses at the airport, located along the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. The airport is within an eyeshot of the national monuments and is a minutes-long commute from downtown Washington.

Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat, told radio station WTOP the morning after the collision that his state’s entire congressional delegation for years had “raised the fact that we’ve got some of the most crowded airspace in the country.”

On Feb. 25, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative in Congress, asked the Defense Department to end all nonessential VIP helicopter flights in the region to make the airport safer.

Lawmakers, Cabinet officials and other dignitaries have long taken military helicopter flights to meetings in the Washington area.

Safety changes have threatened to increase flight interruptions at Reagan, one of the nation’s busiest airports.

After the collision, the FAA suspended its rule that pilots maintain a safe distance from other aircraft based merely on eyesight. Pilots must now use radar.

The new separation rules also require air traffic controllers and pilots to use radar to keep planes 500 feet below or above other aircraft and maintain 1.5 miles of lateral space between them. They do not affect Marine One flights involving the president and the vice president.

On the morning of March 1, at least a dozen flights arriving at the airport received false warnings about nearby aircraft. Some of them aborted their landings and circled to avoid what they thought were other aircraft.

Mr. Duffy said Tuesday that restrictions would continue indefinitely as he consults with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about alternative helicopter routes.

“We might make some modifications,” he said, noting a need for airplanes to land and take off “effectively.”