The Federal Aviation Administration will accept two urgent recommendations from a Federal Safety Board to reduce helicopter traffic around Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC and to lead, after a crash of a passenger jet and an army helicopter on January 29, kill 67 people.
Sean Duffy, the American transport secretary, who supervises the FAA, announced the changes to a press conference on Tuesday. The recommendations include limiting a busy helicopter route that passed the Potomac River that was used by the army Black Hawk The night that bumped into a regional jet of the American Airlines.
Mr Duffy also said that earlier in the day he spoke with Minister of Defense Pete Hegseeth about the curing of an alternative route for military operations around the limited airspace on National Airport. There will be some exemptions for medical emergencies, law enforcement and presidential and vice-presidential journeys, Mr Duffy said.
“We are in a situation where we keep an eye on a needle so that helicopters can fly in the same airspace as landing aircraft,” he said.
The announcement came hours after the National Transportation Safety Board had made the recommendations, which were partly based on an evaluation of data that thousands of cases of aircraft and helicopters found that came close to the airport in recent years.
Jennifer Homendy, the chairman of the board, said at a press conference that the NTSB also discovered that, from 2011 to 2024, an urgent aircraft warning was activated at least once a month, in which pilots were instructed to take emergency to prevent him from hitting helicopters. Aviation pilots are expected to follow the warnings, known as resolution sessions, on other assignments, including instructions for air traffic control.
In more than half of those cases, which were documented in voluntary safety reports and FAA data, the helicopter may have flown above permitted heights for the route. Two of the three of such collision threats took place at night.
Researchers have tried to understand why the Black Hawk flew above the maximum height for his route and how it ended up on the path of the passenger beam.
In response to the data evaluation and other findings, the safety sign ordered that the FAA helicopter traffic permanently prohibits a large part of a corridor that is known as Route 4 – which the Black Hawk traveled in the night of the collision – when aircraft use the landing job of the Airport 33.
Aircraft traffic on the runway is good for less than 10 percent of the departure and arrivals, so the helicopter closures would be limited, the NTSB said.
It also advised that the FAA indicates an alternative helicopter route when that segment is closed for helicopter traffic.
“We have determined that the existing dividing distances between helicopter traffic that work on route 4 and planes on runway 33 are insufficient and are an unbearable risk for aviation safety,” said Mrs. Homanendy in a press conference.
Mr Duffy criticized earlier FAA administrations for non -identifying the safety risk that helicopters are for commercial planes that land at the National Airport, despite access to the available data of years that emphasize the problem.
The recommendations of the NTSB reinforce recent calls from the Congress and US Airlines for the FAA to permanently limit some helicopter traffic around the National Airport.
In a statement, a group of families of some of the victims of the crash said they would insist on permanent reforms.
“Although the report of the NTSB sheds light on important factors of this event, it also strengthens what we, such as the families of the victims, already suspected: serious, systemic failures in the safety of air travel cost our lives their lives and continue to threaten public safety,” they said in the explanation.
The recommendations were shared in addition to a provisional report prepared by NTSB Crash researchers about their first finding in the events that led to the plane crash, which since 2009 was the deadliest in the United States when a Colgan Air flight near Buffalo, NY, with 50 people were killed.
