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President Donald Trump stunned the aviation industry on Thursday when he opined with no evidence that policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) contributed to the Jan. 29 mid-air collision between an American Eagle CRJ700 and a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C. that killed 67 people, even as many of their bodies were still being recovered from the Potomac River.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas and I think we’ll probably state those opinions now,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House that preceded the National Transportation Safety Board’s own initial media briefing on the accident — the nation’s worst air disaster since the crash of Colgan Air flight 3407 in 2009 that killed 50 people.
Although he seemingly stopped short of overt meddling in the investigation, Trump delivered a play-by-play description of unverified events leading to the disaster during which he veered between open speculation, cautious deference to the NTSB investigation and the conclusion that DEI policies had played a role in the crash, citing his reasoning that, “I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
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Irrespective of the substance of Trump’s speculation, by engaging in it, the President of the United States shattered decades’ worth of precedent, both legal and cultural, that has guided heads of state to avoid any overt interference or appearance of the same in active air safety investigations. That precedent has contributed to the overall safety of the aviation system both in the U.S. and globally, allowing for probable cause — and ultimately measures to prevent future accidents — to be established unfettered from political agendas and considerations.
Held shortly after the president’s press conference, the NTSB’s own media briefing on Jan. 30 included many of the standard disclaimers that accompany the board’s arrival on scene to an accident, with Chair Jennifer Homendy additionally emphasizing that the board is an “independent federal agency.”
“We are going to conduct a thorough investigation of this entire tragedy, looking at the facts,” she said during the briefing. Board member J. Todd Inman elaborated: “Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again. Since we’re just beginning our investigation, we don’t have a great deal of information to share right now.”
Responding to media questions about Trump’s comments, Homendy said, “As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment. So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident.” The NTSB has already identified a number of parties that will participate in the investigation, including the U.S. Army.
Homendy, who is loath to wade into partisan political controversy at the risk of damaging the board’s integrity at home and abroad, skirted a question at the press conference about whether the president’s remarks would impact investigators’ ability to determine probable cause, offering a gentle jab at the assembled reporters in response.
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“With all due respect, I think the press also likes to state what probable cause is before we get to the probable cause,” she said. “So what I’m going to say is you need to give us time…We do have information. We have data. We have substantial amounts of information. We need to verify information. We need to take our time to make sure it is accurate. That’s best for you. That’s important for the families. It’s important for legislators who are seeking answers, to try to figure out what they’re going to do about this,” said Homendy.
Members of Trump’s own party supported this thinking as well. In a joint statement issued late Thursday, Republicans Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, and aviation subcommittee Chair Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas (where flight 5342 originated) said: “It is too early to draw conclusions on the cause of this accident, but we will continue to actively gather information and will allow the NTSB to conduct a thorough investigation and determine the probable cause in a timely manner.”
“The NTSB will be the sole source of truth going forward, and accuracy is of the utmost importance,” wrote PSA Airlines parent American Airlines CEO Robert Isom in an internal company message. The Air Current understands that that part of Isom’s message was authored prior to Trump’s comments and particularly pertained to the intense chatter on social media that often bears little resemblance to factual discourse and is highly susceptible to political sway.
International guidance
In breaking with decades of aviation safety precedent, Trump has only added fuel to the growing fire of speculation that always follows major aviation safety incidents by publicly promoting potential causes of the tragedy without verified information and official confirmation from the NTSB. Ultimately, that could undermine the board’s work, experts told TAC.
“If we rush to blame we’ll never identify all the causes that allow the accident to happen and will be allowed to persist in the system,” said Thomas Anthony, director of the University of Southern California’s Aviation Safety and Security program in an interview with TAC. “It is only through standardization that we can maintain an improving level of aviation safety. To not adhere to Annex 13 and the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] conventions would represent a significant retrograde, or significant backward step in aviation safety.”
Annex 13 of the amended Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation spells out the international agreements under which aircraft incidents and accidents and their subsequent investigations take place, establishing a standardized framework in service of shared improvements for aviation safety. First adopted in 1951, Annex 13 is a key guiding element of ICAO, which today has 193 member states — including the U.S.
The agreements explicitly outline the non-disclosure of specific records, including statements, communications, medical or private information about those involved in the accident, cockpit voice recordings, and opinions related to the analysis of the collected investigative information. Annex 13 allows for approved public discussion of these items but only when “their disclosure outweighs the adverse domestic and international impact such action may have on that or any future investigations.”
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“The last eight decades we have learned that lesson and learned that process, which is a disciplined way that identifies hazards that become causes in the system” that contribute to accidents, said Anthony.
ICAO Annex 13 “doesn’t specifically prohibit the president of a country or whatever [from speaking about an incident], but…the whole framework is about aviation expertise and independence and free of political bias and not apportioning blame,” said Jeff Guzzetti, who formerly served as head of accident investigation for the Federal Aviation Administration and was an NTSB specialist for numerous investigations. “The purpose of the investigation is not to apportion blame. And that’s exactly what our president did on the public stage.”
A blame game
Trump almost immediately seemed to single out the air traffic controllers working that night, at one point criticizing the specific timing and phraseology of their traffic advisories. He claimed that DEI hiring policies particularly for controllers had led to a talent shortfall in the workforce, declaring that he would fire federal employees who arrived in their positions as a result of these policies and weren’t “mentally competent.” This is in line with a slew of executive orders signed or rescinded by Trump since taking office on Jan. 20 aimed at reducing the perceived negative influence of these kinds of policies, including one specifically targeting the FAA.
Removing more controllers in particular from the workforce may further undermine the safety of the national airspace system, coming at a time when the FAA is already experiencing a severe shortage of air traffic controllers. TAC has learned that the FAA netted just 36 new controllers in fiscal year 2024 — a staggeringly low figure that reflects both the struggle the agency is facing in bringing new candidates in, as well as the sky-high number of retirements, resignations and departures simultaneously plaguing the highly-stressed workforce.
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In the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act, Congress mandated that the FAA abide by higher, collaboratively-developed staffing targets and authorized resources for higher fidelity ATC training systems, including more advanced simulators at the agency’s Air Traffic Control Academy in Oklahoma City. All of those provisions are especially important at Reagan National Airport (DCA), which has the single busiest runway in the United States, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Yet, relative to its similarly trafficked peer facilities, DCA has had a strong staffing roster at about 89% of its hiring target (above 80% is considered healthy by the FAA). The facility also has a relatively successful training program with a passage rate of about 91%, according to Freedom of Information Act data requested by TAC.
However, the Reauthorization Act also controversially added five new departure and arrival slots at DCA at the behest of lawmakers looking to add more convenient flights to and from the nation’s capital. Since those new routes were already approved by the Department of Transportation last year, the bill effectively added more traffic in the short term without providing additional controllers in the same time frame, given that it takes years to fully certify an air traffic controller at a given facility. DCA was scheduled to operate 24,971 commercial flights in January 2025, about 800 more than the same period a year ago, according to Cirium’s Diio.
‘A pilot problem’
Meanwhile, Trump also faulted the pilots of the helicopter for apparently missing the “blazing” lights of the landing CRJ, insisting that “the helicopter had vision of the plane, because you had…perfect vision of it all the way from at Kennedy Center,” where an observation camera captured the mid-air collision. (The Kennedy Center along the western shore of the Potomac is roughly 3.6 miles from the crash site.)
“For some reason, there weren’t adjustments made,” Trump said, implying that the pilots had numerous options for avoiding the collision. “You could have slowed down the helicopter substantially. You could have stopped the helicopter. You could have gone up, you could have gone down. You could have gone straight up, straight down, you could have turned. You could have done a million different maneuvers.”
Trump’s impulse to attach blame to individuals — pilots and air traffic controllers — is a common one, seen mirrored in many social media posts and other commentary in the aftermath of the crash. Yet, much of the progress made in improving aviation safety in recent decades has come from taking a more systemic view of the factors that contribute to accidents.
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For example, rather than assuming that there was “a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter,” as Trump put it, investigators are likely to explore reports of previous near-misses between planes and helicopters at DCA and examine whether the airspace design and procedures offered sufficient safety margin for minor deviations from assigned routes and altitudes. The limitations of the see-and-avoid principle for traffic separation are well known and have been documented for years, with one 1991 report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau explaining: “Numerous limitations, including those of the human visual system, the demands of cockpit tasks, and various physical and environmental conditions combine to make see-and-avoid an uncertain method of traffic separation.”
Even without any direct involvement or pressure within the investigation itself, the president’s comments will distract investigators, as the board will have to deal with public inquiries regarding the president’s views. However, Guzzetti also sees a longer-term reputational cost for the NTSB as the existing gold standard for aviation investigations and global safety advocacy.
“I think you’re going to have the almost half the country that voted for Trump are going to be skeptical of what the NTSB says,” said Guzzetti. “The NTSB comes out with facts and a probable cause that does not align with Donald Trump’s personal opinion, then their credibility in the NTSB will be diminished and therefore the NTSB will lose part of its bully pulpit in promoting aviation safety. It will skew the view of some of the American public on the credibility of the NTSB.”
Write to Jon Ostrower at jon@theaircurrent.com, Will Guisbond at will@theaircurrent.com and Elan Head at elan@theaircurrent.com
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