It was a week of chaos at airports nationwide — TSA workers left unpaid amid gridlock, long security lines, and a separate collision at LaGuardia. Against that backdrop, a commercial jet crashed into an Army Black Hawk while landing near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), killing 67 people. The controller on duty had been managing an earlier emergency and later said, “I messed up.”
The crash exposed how close the aviation system was to breaking. Last year’s collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army helicopter over the Potomac was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in nearly 25 years. Tonight, the air traffic controller who worked the tower earlier that day speaks for the first time about the stressed conditions she says set the stage for the tragedy.
Seven widows whose husbands were on Flight 5342 shared memories and photos of the men, who were longtime co-workers and friends returning from a hunting trip. Families rushed to the river as divers searched the icy Potomac; by morning, officials confirmed the mission had shifted from rescue to recovery.
Emily Hanoka, an air traffic controller who ended her shift hours before the collision, says controllers warned the Federal Aviation Administration for more than a decade that the mix of frequent passenger jets and military and other helicopters near DCA was dangerous. “You had frontline controllers ringing that bell for years and years, saying this is not safe,” she said. “This cannot continue.”
Between 2021 and 2024, the NTSB confirmed 85 near mid-air collisions between helicopters and commercial aircraft near DCA that were reported to the FAA. Documents show that a day before last year’s crash, two separate passenger jets had to take sudden action to avoid Army helicopters.
DCA is unique: federally owned, constrained by restricted airspace around the White House and Capitol, and regulated in part by congressional flight caps. Since 2000, lawmakers added at least 50 daily flights and approved another 10 in 2024. The airport now moves about 25 million passengers a year — roughly 10 million more than intended capacity.
The airport’s layout compounds the risk. DCA has only three short, nonparallel runways that intersect, so operations are tightly interdependent. Hanoka described a frequent maneuver she called a “squeeze play,” where aircraft operate within seconds of each other, relying on precise timing — one plane rolling as another slows. “It worked until it didn’t,” she said. New controllers arriving from other facilities often refused to train in that environment; Hanoka said about half would withdraw.
A year after the crash, nearly one-third of controller positions in the DCA tower remain unfilled. Controllers had formed local safety councils and repeatedly submitted recommendations, but many changes never progressed.
The NTSB’s 388-page investigation found no single cause of the accident. Instead, investigators cited “systemic failures,” ignored warnings, and a helicopter routing design that in places allowed as little as 75 feet of vertical separation between helicopters and passenger jets. The board issued about 50 safety recommendations to prevent similar accidents.
Military training and operations in the same airspace played a role. Tim Lilley, who flew Black Hawks for 20 years, said the night of the crash the helicopter crew relied on “visual separation” — pilots visually identifying and tracking other aircraft. That method requires pilots to maintain constant surveillance, which Lilley called impossible under these conditions, especially when crews wear night-vision goggles that narrow the field of view and wash out details amid city lights. Simulations showed how difficult it was for the Black Hawk crew to distinguish a jet from ground lighting until it was too late.
Lilley, now an advocate for safety changes, lost his son Sam, the first officer on Flight 5342. “I never thought to warn him about the helicopters,” he said, noting how safety margins had eroded over time.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the system failed people in the air, on the helicopter, and in the control tower. After the crash, the FAA moved some helicopter routes away from DCA and ended the use of visual separation; it later expanded that ban to busy airports nationwide. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told 60 Minutes he has helped secure more than $12 billion to overhaul the air traffic control system.
Despite changes, problems persist. Since the crash, at least four additional incidents where aircraft and helicopters came too close have triggered safety reports. Some bereaved families now lobby on Capitol Hill for aircraft surveillance technology that might have prevented the collision. Homendy warned that without swift legislative and regulatory action, the system remains at risk. “Why do we always have to wait until people die to take action?” she asked.
Produced by Andrew Bast. Associate producer, Jessica Kegu. Broadcast associate, Erin DuCharme. Edited by Thomas Xenakis.