American Airlines crash ends era of unprecedented U.S. airline safety

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An American Eagle CRJ700 collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday evening near Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport, ending a period of extraordinary aviation safety in the United States after more than a decade and a half without a major air disaster at a U.S. airline.

As a massive emergency response effort unfolded in the hours following the collision over the Potomac River just short of National Airport’s Runway 33, hope of locating survivors among the 64 passengers and crew aboard the regional jet and the three Army personnel flying in the Black Hawk appeared to be diminishing, setting it up to be the worst U.S. air disaster since the Colgan Air crash that killed 50 people outside of Buffalo, New York in February 2009.

The area of the collision is a tightly controlled, but congested airspace that hosts one of the country’s busiest airports alongside a low-altitude helicopter route that sees military aircraft regularly transiting between the Pentagon and nearby bases, as well as Coast Guard patrols and routine flights by Marine Corps helicopters serving the White House, including those carrying the President of the United States. 

The investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board will focus on why and how the Black Hawk lost separation as the PSA Airlines CRJ, operating as American Airlines flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, descended on short final to the airport, which juts out into the Potomac and features three overlapping runways in a tight configuration.

The accident comes at a time of considerable upheaval in U.S. aviation leadership, following the resignation of Federal Aviation Administration head Mike Whitaker on Jan. 20. Former National Business Aviation Association executive Chris Rocheleau has been sworn in as deputy administrator, although the White House has not yet confirmed whether he has assumed the acting administrator role — making it unclear who is currently running the aviation regulator. U.S. transportation secretary Sean Duffy was sworn in only on Jan. 28, a mere day before the disaster. 

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the status of leadership at the FAA. 

There have been a spate of accidents in the years since Colgan Air flight 3407, including the botched landing of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013. Three passengers were killed in that accident, one as a result of vehicles driven by first responders, while the other two passengers were likely not wearing their seatbelts and were ejected from the aircraft, according to the NTSB’s final report.

Large-scale accidents and fatalities involving U.S. air carriers have been virtually unheard of in the contemporary era, built on a foundation of meaningful regulation, deep institutional experience, new technology, and vigilance. In 2018, a Southwest Airlines 737-700 suffered an engine failure, causing damage to the fuselage windows that resulted in a single fatality when a passenger was partially sucked out of the aircraft. In October 2019, a PenAir Saab 2000 overran a runway in Alaska, killing one passenger when one of its propeller blades impacted the fuselage.

In the post-pandemic era, air safety experts, unions and regulators have issued repeated warnings that the U.S. air traffic system has remained fragile as air carriers grappled with major turnover in their operations as a result of a mass wave of retirements and arrival of new staff in the air and on the ground, all while the nation’s air traffic infrastructure has remained extremely stressed with chronic understaffing and out-of-date equipment.

There have been numerous close calls within the U.S. system that have ranged from near loss of control incidents to runway incursions and near mid-air collisions, including a loss of separation event between a United Airlines and Delta Air Lines flight in Phoenix on Jan. 11. 

The U.S. airline domestic capacity is 3.6% above January 2020 levels just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but domestic scheduled operations are still 10% lower than five years ago, according to Cirium’s Diio.

Write to Jon Ostrower at jon@theaircurrent.com, Will Guisbond at will@theaircurrent.com and Elan Head at elan@theaircurrent.com