As they flew south along the Potomac River on the gusty night of Jan. 29, the crew aboard an Army Black Hawk helicopter attempted to execute a common aviation practice. It would play a role in ending their lives. Shortly after the Black Hawk passed over Washington’s most famous array of cherry trees, an air…
The Federal Aviation Administration will adopt two urgent recommendations issued by a federal safety board to reduce and reroute helicopter traffic around Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., after a midair crash of a passenger jet and an Army helicopter on Jan. 29 killed 67 people. Sean Duffy, the U.S. transportation secretary, who oversees…
The family of one of the 67 victims of a plane crash last month near Washington filed two legal claims against the federal government on Tuesday, seeking compensation and signifying the beginning of what is expected to be a long and complex legal fight. The claims, which appear to be the first against the U.S….
In many ways, the issues at Reagan National’s control tower are emblematic of the fraying safety net that protects air travel throughout the United States. A Times investigation in 2023 found that close calls involving passenger planes happened, on average, multiple times each week across the country. The near misses were often the result of…
Flying helicopters near Ronald Reagan National Airport always carries some risk. But the conditions on the moonless night of Jan. 29, when an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet collided, were unusually challenging. Many of the factors that contributed to the disaster are still being uncovered as investigators from the National…
Salvage crews began lifting the wreckage of American Airlines Flight 5342 from the Potomac River in Washington on Monday morning, the start of an operation that was expected to take three days. Just after 10 a.m. Eastern, the first piece of wreckage appeared. A crane perched on a barge in the middle of the river…
Years ago, Mr. Cox said, he was descending in a Boeing 737 over Orlando International Airport when the system alerted him and his co-pilot to traffic nearby. The pilots looked around for another aircraft, but saw nothing. Then, TCAS provided an urgent instruction: “Climb.” Mr. Cox said they did so and later saw a smaller…
Clues emerging from the moments before the deadly collision Wednesday night between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet suggest that multiple layers of the country’s aviation safety apparatus failed, according to flight recordings, a preliminary internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration, interviews with current and former air traffic controllers and others…