- The air traffic control tower was understaffed when a passenger plane and military helicopter collided, killing 67 people.
- The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, focusing on air traffic controllers' roles.
- The collision has reignited debate over the crowded airspace and safety concerns at Reagan National Airport.
By Katie Shepherd, Aaron C. Davis, Victoria Craw, Olivia George, Ian Duncan
The air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC was understaffed on Thursday when a passenger plane and a military helicopter collided in midair, according to a Government report about the circumstances surrounding the disaster that killed 67 people and sparked renewed debate around the airport’s crowded airspace.
According to the report, described to the Washington Post, two people were handling the jobs of four among other colleagues inside National’s control tower at the time of the collision. The control tower staffing levels, the report concludes, were “not normal” for the time of day or the amount of air traffic over DC, where an average of more than 100 helicopters a day zip underneath arriving and departing airline flights.
The crash occurred around 8.50pm on Wednesday (US time) and its cause remained unclear today.
While federal investigators hunt for answers – chiefly how this could happen when aeroplanes and helicopters are often equipped with software to detect nearby aircraft – a portrait emerged of a cramped and swarming airspace, the subject of safety warnings by federal officials and lawmakers and the site of a number of close calls in recent years, including about 24 hours before Thursday’s collision. The day before, another plane had to abort a landing at National to avoid a crash with a helicopter.
Story continues after live blog
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On Thursday, the position of helicopter controller – a role typically staffed until 9.30pm – had been combined ahead of the crash with that of local controller, according to the report. Doubling up those roles can create challenges for an air traffic controller, especially if the airspace is busy. The roles use different radio frequencies, and aeroplane pilots and helicopter pilots cannot necessarily hear each other even if they’re both in touch with the tower.
Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (Natca) immediately responded to questions about staffing.
National Transportation Safety Board officials said they would leave no stone unturned in an investigation that may not definitively answer the critical question – how did this happen? – for months. The board will examine the role played by air traffic controllers in the crash, officials said in a briefing.
Within hours the crash had also spurred a political fight, with US President Donald Trump heaping blame at the feet of his Democratic predecessors on Friday. Trump appeared to point the finger at air traffic controllers and the helicopter’s pilot.
More than 300 first responders from the region, coming from as far away as Baltimore, mounted a difficult overnight rescue mission in frigid winds on the icy Potomac River. Divers, nauseated by the smell of jet fuel, pulled victims out of the water. The bodies were mangled. Blood pooled on board a fireboat. By morning, the hope for survivors had faded, and the mission turned to recovery.
The plane that departed from Wichita on Thursday carried 60 passengers and four crew members, according to a statement by American Airlines. The US Army helicopter had a crew of three soldiers. Bodies were taken to National and near the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, where authorities had pitched red morgue tents on the banks of the Anacostia River. By Friday, officials had recovered the bodies of 27 plane passengers and one helicopter crew member. An emergency responder said more remains were being retrieved throughout the day.
On the day of the tragedy, according to the air traffic safety report that is distributed daily to air traffic managers and federal transportation officials, there were five controllers and one trainee controller on duty. In addition, there was one supervisor, and one supervisor in training.
The report said the helicopter control position, or HC, was combined with the local controller or LC position. It did not say what time that change occurred but said the “HC position is normally staffed” from 10am to 9.30pm but “can be consolidated at the discretion” of the supervisor on duty.
Additionally, the roles of flight data controller and clearance delivery controller had also been combined that evening, according to the report.
Natca, the controllers’ labour union, has warned in recent years that a thinly stretched workforce poses a risk to safety.
“Chronically understaffed facilities also introduce unnecessary safety risks into the system,” Rich Santa, then the union’s president, testified before a House subcommittee in November 2023.
The NTSB will seek to determine who was filling which posts in the tower and whether any of the controllers on duty were fatigued.
Reports of problems at National began to emerge Friday, including an incident one day before the fatal crash in which a different jet coming in for a landing alerted the tower that it had to abort a landing attempt because of a helicopter that appeared in its flight path.
A female voice in the cockpit of Republic Airways Flight 4514 informed the tower of the problem at roughly 8.05pm Tuesday (US time), according to the audio recording of air traffic control traffic. The plane took a sharp turn to the west, made a loop to try to make a second approach, and safely landed at 8.16pm, flight tracking records indicate. A Republic Airways spokesperson said the company was reviewing the Post’s questions and details of the incident and could not immediately comment.
The crowded airspace around National has long been a topic of heated debate among policymakers and members of Congress. Thursday’s crash occurred in one of the most complex air traffic corridors in the United States, where military helicopters fly near passenger jets and key sites such as the White House, Capitol and Pentagon. The airport is operating well above its capacity: it was designed to handle 15 million passengers annually, but numbers have soared to 25 million.
Three close calls investigated by the FAA in recent years had led some to oppose adding new flights, such as the non-stop journey between Wichita and DC, that were added last year.
The day after the crash, Trump opened a public address with a moment of silence for the victims. Minutes later, he launched into political speech baselessly casting blame for the collision on his Democratic predecessors and diversity, equity and inclusion programmes despite acknowledging the cause of the crash was still unknown.
Trump spread blame for the crash without providing any evidence or information about what caused the collision. He said air traffic control warnings came “very very late”. He then suggested the helicopter pilots should have “seen where they were going” and acted to avoid the accident. The President also harshly criticised former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg for implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the department and characterised the Democrat’s time over the agency as a “disaster”.
Buttigieg swiftly responded with an equally sharp retort, calling the President “despicable”.
The President did not mention his own administration’s role in overseeing the FAA or the Transportation Department at the time of the crash. Trump also appointed a new acting FAA administrator, Chris Rocheleau, on Friday. Rocheleau, chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association, fills the seat vacated by Michael Whitaker, who stepped down on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
Congress controls how National operates because the airport is owned by the federal government, and in May five round-trip flights were added when President Joe Biden signed the FAA Reauthorisation bill into law. Lawmakers from both parties supported the move, especially those eager for a direct flight from their district to the airport closest to DC.
But a group of Democratic senators from the region argued that additional flights would lead to congestion, delays and safety problems. In March 2023, Democratic senators representing Virginia and Maryland – Mark R. Warner, Tim Kaine, Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen – wrote to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee outlining “strong opposition” to adding more flights. After the bill passed anyway, Kaine and Warner said the Senate had “abdicated its responsibility to protect the safety of the 25 million people who fly through DCA every year”.
The chaos and tragic toll of Thursday’s crash swiftly reopened that debate. Kaine said on Friday it wasn’t clear whether the complicated and crowded airspace contributed to the crash, but the issue has been a major concern for some lawmakers.
In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Daniel Driscoll, Trump’s nominee to serve as Army secretary, said the accident seemed to be preventable and he would consider re-evaluating when and where Army helicopters fly training missions to avoid future tragedies.
“I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan,” Driscoll said.
Not long before 9pm Wednesday (US time), the small passenger plane and helicopter collided, bursting into a fireball that was visible from some distance away. A brief shower of sparks lit the night sky, and the two devastatingly damaged aircraft dropped into the icy, black water below.
The alarm from the airport’s control tower sounded at 8.48pm. “Crash crash crash. This an alert three. Crash crash crash.”
That alert – the highest and most urgent priority signalling a confirmed aircraft crash – broadcast directly to the radios of DC firefighters and police officers assigned to the marine unit. Those rescue workers launched immediately, even as dispatchers called for help as the true scope of the crash and its deadly consequences became more clear.
Officials have not yet released the identity of all who died in the crash, but some communities are already mourning losses.
Christine Conrad Lane, 49, and her adopted son Spencer, 16, were on the American Eagle flight returning to their home in Rhode Island from the US Figure Skating Championships hosted in Wichita last week. Spencer had been training at the most prestigious annual event on the American figure skating calendar, a big step in the sport that the teenager hoped would be his future.
Spencer fell in love with figure skating watching YouTube, his grandparents said in a phone interview Friday with the Post. Athletes twirling, leaping and gliding across smooth ice. He was hooked. He practised four days a week, his grandparents said. He was working hard to pull off a triple axel. His eyes were set on the Olympics.
Then came the call from Christine’s husband on Thursday.
“I don’t want you to panic like I’m panicking,” Wayne Conrad, Spencer’s grandfather and Christine’s father, recalled him saying. “But I heard a plane from Wichita went down.”
Christine and Spencer were flying into National and catching a connecting flight home to Rhode Island. Their flight to DC never landed.
“With every passing moment, we realised hope was gone,” Wayne Conrad said.
Other members of the ice skating community were also on the flight, including two former champion figure skaters from Russia, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
At the Ashburn Ice House in Loudoun County, Virginia, a steady trickle of visitors stopped in with flowers, teddy bears and a balloon that they arranged on a shelf in the main lobby.
Four DC-area steamfitters were also on the plane, according to a statement by their union. They were members of Steamfitters Local 602 – a Prince George’s County, Maryland-based union that represents steamfitters and pipe fitters in the DC area.
“Our focus now is on providing support and care to the families of our Brothers as we continue to gather more information in the coming days,” the statement said.
- Jenny Gathright, Teo Armus, Emma Uber, Gregory Schneider, Mariana Alfaro, Hannah Knowles, Peter Hermann, Nicole Asbury, Carol Leonnig and Andrew Ba Tran contributed to this report.
