US airlines’ 16-year safety record ended with tragedy. There were warnings ahead of the crash

The near collisions, often wrongly referred to by the public as “near misses,” are far more common that most passengers know.

New York (CNN) — US airlines had gone 16 years without a fatal crash until Wednesday night. But as impressive as that safety record had been, there have been warning signs in recent years of a significant risk of a collision like the one that just killed 67 people.

A regional jet from Wichita, Kansas, operated as an American Airlines flight by feeder carrier PSA Airlines, was preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter that was crossing its path just a few hundred feet above the ground. The cause of the crash was unknown Thursday as the investigation is just beginning. It was the first fatal crash of a commercial US airplane since 2009.

As safe as air travel has become, the US air travel system has been under increasing stress in recent years — with a well-established shortage of the air traffic controllers throughout the nation, despite years of attempting to ramp up hiring. And congestion in many major metropolitan areas, especially around Washington DC, make flying riskier than 16 crash-free years might suggest.

“I’m saddened, but I’m not surprised,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety expert. “In the last two to three years, we’ve had so many close calls with commercial planes having near collisions in and near airport environments. If changes aren’t made, you eventually meet with tragedy.”

Experts say that while America retains a gold standard for airline safety and that commercial air travel is the safest form of travel, there are stresses on the system that have been apparent in a series of near tragedies in recent years.

A strained air traffic control system and congestion in the air space over many major cities has squeezed the margins of safety needed to operate the America’s air transportation system, Captain Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot, told CNN early Thursday.

“You’ve got all the things stacked up against you,” he said. “We’ve got to protect the American public’s trust in the system and prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again. The saying goes, ‘You have to investigate accidents before they happen, not after, to get long-term fixes.’ Complacency has no place in our skies today, and we have to make sure we maintain that attitude.”

Near collisions have become common

The near collisions, often wrongly referred to by the public as “near misses,” are far more common that most passengers know.

In fact just one day before the crash, another regional jet approaching Reagan National airport was forced to abort its first landing and go around after a helicopter flew near its flight path, according to air traffic control audio.

That regional jet, inbound from Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Connecticut, began a climbing right, and told air traffic control, “We had … helicopter traffic below us.” It soon landed safely at the airport. The incident was first reported by the Washington Post.

Thursday CNN found at least two other pilots in the last three years reported near-collisions with helicopters while landing at Reagan National, according to federal incident reports.

The two passenger planes had to take evasive action to avoid colliding with a helicopter when trying to land at the airport, according to reports filed by pilots. In a third incident, two military helicopters got too close together, an air traffic controller reported.

“It’s unbelievable how much we fly without incident,” said former FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt told CNN. “So when we do have one, it lights up everything.”

There have many been other such incidents that are characterized as near collisions by the FAA. One occurred less than three weeks ago in Phoenix when a United Airlines flight from San Francisco carrying 123 passengers and six crew members and a Delta Air Lines flight carrying 245 passengers from Detroit both got clearance to land at virtually the same time, resulting in both receiving warnings they were too close to one another. The aircraft were 1,217 feet — less than a quarter-mile — apart, according to data from flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

The cockpit warning systems that alerted those two planes likely was not able to warn the pilots in the American Airlines flight Wednesday night, because it was only 375 feet above the ground when the Army helicopter was approaching it. Details of what warning the pilots of both aircraft received will be determined in the upcoming crash investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Some near collisions take place on the ground, not in the air. But they can be just as dangerous, given the speed that planes are traveling on takeoff or landing.

On December 27, a charter jet carrying the Gonzaga men’s basketball team nearly crossed a runway at Los Angeles International Airport on which a Delta plane was taking off.

Some of the near collisions brought two planes even closer to one another. On February 4, 2023, a FedEx jet came within 150 feet of the runway before its pilots realized a Southwest jet was taking off on the same runway. It was one of five such incidents in a period of just seven weeks at the start of last year.

And none of those were potentially as serious as an incident in July 2017, when an Air Canada jet piloted by a captain who had been awake for more than 19 hours nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport where three wide-body jets filled with passengers were waiting to take off.

The NTSB later determined the Air Canada jet got within 100 feet of the ground before it took off again without making contact with any of the passenger planes on the ground. The safety regulator said more than 1,000 people on the four planes might have died had the accident not been averted at the last moment.

“It would have been the worst disaster in aviation history,” Brickhouse, the aviation safety expert, said. “Pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics — they’re all human, and humans make mistakes. We’ve been working toward designing the system so that when mistakes are made, we can recover from them without it being a tragedy.”

And such near collisions have become so common that the Federal Aviation Administration announced an audit of such incidents last fall.

Additionally, there was just one air traffic controller working two different tower positions at the time of the collision Wednesday night, an air traffic control source tells CNN. The source described the set-up, which had one person handling both local and helicopter traffic, as not uncommon.

The Reagan National control tower is 85% staffed, the source said, with 24 of 28 positions filled.

Despite the fact that there is nothing known at this point as to the who was at fault for the crash — air traffic control, the plane’s pilot or the helicopter’s pilot, let alone the qualifications of the people involved in those roles Wednesday night — President Donald Trump, without evidence, blamed the crash on Democrats’ efforts to have a “diversity push” as part of the hiring process at the the FAA’s air traffic control system. Vice President JD Vance echoed that claim.

Asked at a press conference if he was blaming the air traffic controllers for the crash, or had evidence that they were in that job despite not being qualified, Trump responded, “It just could have been.” Asked why he believed diversity hiring efforts played a role in the crash, he responded, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Trump has signed executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at most of the federal government, including the Transportation Department. But he had not nominated a new head of the FAA until Thursday’s press conference, when he announced that he had picked Chris Rocheleau to lead the nation’s key aviation safety regulator. The previous FAA administrator, Michael Whitaker, left the job the day Trump took office.

DC air space is particularly challenging

Some airports and air space are under more stress than others. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has the busiest runway in the nation. The airport has seen a number of near collisions in recent years, including an American Airlines flight bound for Boston in May that was forced to abort takeoff to avoid another plane that was landing.

And a JetBlue plane and Southwest plane nearly collided on the runway of Reagan National Airport in Washington on April 18, when one was cleared for takeoff as the other was directed to cross the runway it was on.

Tight restrictions on where planes can fly is a major issue in Washington DC, with narrow flight paths to avoid areas with high-security needs like the Capitol building and White House. The nation’s capital represents a unique conundrum for flights in the US. Demand is huge at Reagan Washington National thanks to how close it is to downtown Washington. And members of Congress, which controls how many aircraft can use that airport, are often pushing for more direct flights to more destinations.

Congress approved five additional round trip flights at the airport just last fall. At a press conference at the airport early Thursday, just hours after the crash, Senator Jerry Moran said that he had pushed American to schedule the flight from Wichita to the Washington airport.

“I know that flight. I’ve flown it many times myself,” said Moran, a Republican from Kansas. “I lobbied American Airlines to begin having a direct nonstop flight service to DCA. That flight has been existence about a year.”

At press conferences Thursday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who took office just hours before the crash, said he is convinced that the air traffic system is safe but that the crash is a sign that things need to change.

“What happened yesterday should not have happened,” he said. “When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable.”

CNN’s Alexandra Skores, Pete Muntean, Oren Liebermann, Aaron Cooper, Casey Tolan, Majle de Puy Kamp, Curt Devine, Haley Britzky, Samantha Waldenberg and Donald Judd contributed to this report.

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