NTSB approves nearly 50 new safety recommendations in probe of deadly DCA plane collision

Members of the National Transportation Safety Board approved nearly 50 new safety recommendations Tuesday after completing a nearly year-long review of a deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., last year.

The recommendations included several about the advanced technology known as ADS-B, which can transmit an aircraft's location, after the investigation found that the plane's ADS-B technology did not work on the night of the crash, per NPR.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in her opening remarks at a hearing on the deadly plane collision near the Reagan National Airport that it was "deep, underlying systemic failures" that led to the fatal accident.

The hearing took place almost a year to the day of the Jan. 29, 2025, collision between an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, which killed all 67 people on both aircraft.

The board did not state a specific cause of the crash, but investigators highlighted key problems such as "overwhelmed" air traffic controllers, a history of missed opportunities to reroute helicopter traffic and a reliance by pilots on visual separation.

"Deep, underlying systemic failures — system flaws — aligned to create the conditions that led to the devastating tragedy," Homendy said in her remarks. 

The chairwoman commented that there were "chilling" similarities between the crashes in Washington, D.C., a 1969 midair collision that killed 83 people near Shelbyville, Indiana, and a 2019 midair collision in Alaska.

"In any one of them, we could have blamed flight crews, individual pilots, maintenance personnel, or controllers," she said. "But we didn’t because we have long recognized that human error is a symptom of a system that needs to be redesigned."

The board was most harsh on the Federal Aviation Administration after investigators found that the FAA failed to act on repeated concerns about a lack of adequate separation between helicopter traffic along the Potomac River and the approach to Runway 33, where American Airlines Flight 5342 was attempting to land.

The board also noted that the FAA ignored repeated requests from air traffic controllers to decrease the number of flights traveling into the D.C., airport, months before a deadly collision took place.

“It’s one failure after another,” Homendy told reporters during a break in the proceedings. “This was 100% preventable.”

The agency is expected to issue a final report in about two weeks.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.