Sheri Lilley spent the day one year ago looking at wedding venues for her son, Sam, while he was working as an airline pilot. Hours later, she would learn that Sam had been killed in the nation’s worst aviation accident in a generation.
Mrs. Lilley and her husband, Tim, have turned their grief into advocacy for better flight safety in remembrance of Sam.
Their son was the first officer on American Airlines Flight 5342 on Jan. 29, 2025, and among the 67 killed when an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with the regional jetliner over the Potomac near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
“We’ve said a couple of times in the past, we wanted to make the name Sam Lilley synonymous with aviation safety,” Mrs. Lilley said. “That would be a great legacy and a way to honor his name.”
The disaster has prompted Congress and federal regulators to push for changes to make the skies around the nation’s capital safer. That includes increased control tower staffing, less aircraft congestion around Reagan Airport and advanced tracking systems so aircraft operators know where they are in real time.
Some of these problems were systemic and long-standing, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday as it released its final report on the worst domestic plane crash since 2001.
The NTSB said the Federal Aviation Administration had ignored a decade-old recommendation to divert helicopter traffic away from Reagan, one of the country’s busiest airports.
Citing FAA data, the safety board previously reported 85 incidents at the airport in recent years in which two aircraft flew within a few hundred feet of each other. The NTSB previously noted that airplane pilots had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid striking helicopters at least once a month from 2011 through 2024.
An air traffic controller at Reagan Airport told his supervisor that he was “overwhelmed” in the 90 seconds leading up to the collision because he was managing 12 aircraft, including five helicopters, investigators said. Despite the plea for help, the supervisor did not adjust the controller’s workload.
Investigators further determined that the Army helicopter crew was flying 78 feet above its 200-foot maximum altitude just before 9 p.m., when the collision occurred.
The NTSB said the Black Hawk’s altimeter was malfunctioning. Investigators said the Army knew the altimeter had accuracy issues but did not share that information with the three soldiers aboard the aircraft.
“I’m sorry for you, as these pages of these reports are written in your family members’ blood,” NTSB member Todd Inman said during a hearing. “I’m sorry that we have to be here.”
Some of the victims’ family members who attended the hearing struggled to accept that carelessness was the cause of their loved ones’ deaths.
“The negligence of not fixing things that needed to be fixed killed my brother and 66 other people. So I’m not very happy,” Kristen Miller-Zahn, whose brother Dustin Miller died in the crash, told The Associated Press.
Federal officials have moved to correct safety issues surrounding the airport since the collision.
The FAA enacted a rule prohibiting helicopters and airplanes from sharing airspace around the bustling runways.
The agency also increased staff in the airport’s control tower and reduced arrivals from 36 to 30 per hour to avoid overburdening its air traffic controllers.
Last month, Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, and Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat, helped pass the ROTOR Act, which requires all aircraft to use Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, technology to broadcast their location.
The Black Hawk helicopter had its ADS-B technology turned off at the time of the crash because the Army didn’t want observers to know its whereabouts during a training mission.
In the spring, the military required all aircraft to use the technology when traveling through crowded airspaces.
The House has yet to take up the ROTOR Act.
The FAA’s updated rules also require military aircraft to share their location. The agency went a step further, saying air traffic controllers can no longer rely on visual separation.
Investigators have said the Black Hawk crew may have misidentified which aircraft they were supposed to be monitoring during their flight. The misidentification was likely compounded by their limited depth perception while using night vision.
Mrs. Lilley said she hopes the Army refines how it teaches visual separation to its pilots.
She said NTSB documents revealed that the Army was not instructing its pilots to keep passing aircraft in sight until the approaching plane or helicopter had flown by.
If the military ever plans to resume its flights around Reagan, Mrs. Lilley said, the lax attitude toward those flights needs to change.
It’s part of her broader crusade against a “culture of complacency,” as she put it.
She mentioned that in earlier NTSB hearings about the crash, none of the military pilots questioned said they had ever filed a safety report over a concern about the aircraft. Mrs. Lilley suggested that they likely feared retribution from their commanding officers.
“If the individuals using it believe that it can be used punitively, no one will adopt it. That seemed to be the case with the military,” Mrs. Lilley said. “We’ve talked a lot about culture and how a safety management system cannot be used to discipline aviators or mechanics flight crew.”
• Susan Ferrechio contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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