‘An intolerable risk’: NTSB issues urgent safety recommendations after Flight 5342 crash
The National Transportation Safety Board has issued urgent safety recommendations to continue restricting helicopter travel near Reagan National Airport in its preliminary report on the Wichita-to-D.C. Flight 5342 crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration currently is restricting helicopter travel along two routes near the Potomac River and the airport until March 31. In a news conference Tuesday, the administration said it will continue some of those restrictions to go along with the NTSB’s recommendations.
The board recommended that the FAA continue to restrict travel along one of those routes, Route 4, while flights are landing or departing from Reagan on runways 15 and 33. It also further recommended the FAA establish an alternative route when those runways are in use.
“We’ve determined that the existing separation distances between helicopter traffic operating on Route 4 and aircraft landing on Runway 33 are insufficient and pose an intolerable risk to aviation safety by increasing the chances of a mid-air collision at DCA,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said during a news conference Tuesday.
Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said both of those recommendations will be implemented.
“To the recommendations that the NTSB have given us off this crash, we are adopting. We accept them,” Duffy said in a news conference. “We were actually doing them 36 hours after the crash, and we’ll look forward to hearing more from the NTSB as their recommendations and investigations continue.”
Flight 5342 was preparing to land on runway 33 during the mid-air collision with the Black Hawk helicopter.
The NTSB found that the Black Hawk helicopter was flying above the altitude threshold for the route it was on, leading to the mid-air collision that killed 67 people.
The preliminary report found that between Oct. 2021 and Dec. 2024, 15,214 close proximity events between airplanes and helicopters were recorded near Reagan Airport.
In nearly half of those instances, helicopters were flying above the altitude threshold for the route, like what happened the night of the crash. About two-thirds of those instances were recorded at night, according to the NTSB report.
“There’s a serious safety issue here, which is why we’re issuing these urgent safety recommendations,” Homendy said.
That data was available to the FAA, but was not acted upon, according to Duffy. In response, the FAA will begin using “AI tools” to flag other concerning data points.
”So if there’s another DCA-esque situation out there, our AI tools will help us identify those and take corrective actions preemptively, as opposed to retroactively,” Duffy said.
The NTSB’s report did not go into detail about staffing in the air traffic control tower that evening, but said that there were five controllers.
The transportation secretary said at the news conference he’ll fast track a funding package, $8 billion over five years, through Congress to modernize air traffic control.
“We’re going to roll this out, give it to the Hill, put a price tag on it, and we’re going to start the work of building a brand new air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world,” Duffy said.
The NTSB will continue to investigate the incident and release its final report on the crash likely next year.
This story was originally published March 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM with the headline "‘An intolerable risk’: NTSB issues urgent safety recommendations after Flight 5342 crash."