Federal investigators probing January’s fatal air collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport have called for permanent restrictions on military helicopters in the area to make it safer for commercial passengers.
In a preliminary report Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board urged the Federal Aviation Administration to “prohibit operations” and identify alternative routes for helicopters flying between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge when passenger jets are landing or taking off at runways 15 and 33.
The Jan. 29 nighttime collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet killed 67 people as the airliner descended over the Potomac River to land at runway 33.
According to the NTSB report, the crash likely occurred nearly 300 feet from the ground as the helicopter strayed well above its 200-foot limit while conducting an annual test flight.
Investigators said the proposed changes should help resolve a longstanding problem of helicopters flying too close to commercial jets as they land at Reagan.
“Review of information gathered from voluntary safety reporting programs along with FAA data regarding encounters between helicopters and commercial aircraft near DCA from 2011 through 2024 indicated that a vast majority of the reported events occurred on approach to landing,” the report said.
An NTSB review of 944,179 commercial arrivals and departures at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024 found 15,214 near-collisions between commercial airplanes and helicopters that had less than 400 feet of vertical separation between them.
Of them, 85 recorded events involved a lateral separation of less than 1,500 feet and vertical separation of less than 200 feet.
“In over half of these instances, the helicopter may have been above the route altitude restriction,” the report said. “Two-thirds of the events occurred at night.”
At an afternoon press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy noted that the helicopter route has been closed since the accident. He pledged to follow the NTSB recommendations to shutter it permanently and develop alternative routes for helicopters in the region.
He said it’s time to “learn from this air disaster” by fixing problems, which pilots had discussed for years without anyone addressing them.
“To see that we had this kind of risk at DCA makes me angry,” Mr. Duffy said.
He also promised to ask Congress for funds to update the technology used in airline safety and air-traffic control operations nationwide, citing infrastructure dating back to the 1960s.
“We’re going to lay out our plan to actually do it really quickly,” Mr. Duffy said.
The office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, declined to comment on the NTSB recommendations.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Reagan airport, said it “is not permitted to discuss information or details about the incident or its investigation.”
According to the preliminary report, the NTSB investigation into the cause of January’s accident remains ongoing.
Some airline-industry veterans said the preliminary findings highlight how lucky air passengers have been during landings at Reagan over the past several decades.
“Given there were more than 15,000 recent low-altitude helicopter-aircraft proximity alerts, and the slim margins, it is incomprehensible that this policy and practice continued for so long,” said Robert W. Mann, a former American Airlines executive and independent airline consultant based in Port Washington, New York.
Local officials have come under fire from federal lawmakers over the past two months for ignoring complaints about near-misses at the airport, which is located in Arlington, Virginia along the Potomac River within eyeshot of the national monuments and a minutes-long commute from downtown Washington.
Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat, told WTOP the morning after the collision that his state’s entire congressional delegation for years has “raised the fact that we’ve got some of the most crowded airspace in the country.”
On Feb. 25, Democratic Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative in Congress, asked the Department of Defense to end all non-essential VIP helicopter flights in the region to make Reagan airport safer.
Lawmakers, Cabinet officials and other dignitaries have long taken military helicopter flights to meetings in the Washington metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, recent safety changes have threatened to increase flight interruptions at Reagan, one of the nation’s busiest airports.
Following the collision, the FAA also suspended its rule that let pilots maintain their safety distance from other aircraft merely based on their eyes, requiring now that they use radar.
The new separation rules also require air traffic controllers and pilots to use radar to keep planes 500 feet below or above other aircraft and maintain 1.5 miles of lateral space between them. They do not affect Marine One helicopter flights involving the president and the vice president.
On the morning of March 1, at least a dozen flights arriving at Reagan received false warnings, leading some of them to abort their landings and circle to avoid what they thought were other aircraft.
Mr. Duffy said Tuesday that post-crash restrictions would continue indefinitely as he consults with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about alternative helicopter routes.
“We might make some modifications,” he added, noting a need for airplanes to land and take off “effectively.”
