The loved ones of the 67 people who died last year when an airliner and Army helicopter collided over Washington, D.C., urged Congress and regulators Tuesday to do more now to prevent other families from being left clutching belongings and memories instead of their spouses and children.
Several of the victims' families joined with top lawmakers and the head of the National Transportation Safety Board outside the U.S. Capitol to demand action, but it may be difficult for this Congress to pass anything ahead of the midterm elections. And lawmakers are still trying to draft a compromise bill that will combine elements of the competing proposals that previously passed the House and Senate.
Doug Lane said he has the U.S. figure skating jacket that his son Spencer worked so hard to earn and pieces of his wife Christine's laptop that were retrieved from the wreckage after their plane plunged into the icy Potomac River in the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since 2001. Everyone aboard was killed when American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, and the Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission collided. The victims included 28 members of the figure skating community.
Lane said the families don't want to see the key reforms recommended after this crash — which include requiring planes to be equipped with systems that will let pilots know exactly where other aircraft are — to wind up like some of the never-implemented measures proposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Airline pilots are still pushing for secondary barriers to keep someone from storming the cockpit when the door is opened.
“That is what fading urgency looks like. Something everyone agrees will make people safer gets caught in process, objections, exceptions and delay until you look up and an entire generation has passed. Flight 5342 cannot follow that path,” Lane said.
The FAA quickly restricted helicopter traffic around Reagan National Airport when it became clear that a helicopter route in the approach path of the airport's secondary runway didn’t ensure enough separation between helicopters and planes. But the NTSB remains unsatisfied with the FAA's response to a third of the 33 safety recommendations it received.
FAA Administrator Brian Bedford testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday that his staff will work to address those concerns, but he also needs guidance from Congress.
Some progress, but families want meaningful reforms
Already, steps have been taken to prevent helicopters and planes from sharing the same airspace around Reagan airport, and air traffic controllers are now prohibited from relying only on pilots to see other aircraft and avoid them.
But concerning incidents continue to happen, such as when an airline jet was allowed to take off just as President Donald Trump's helicopter was taking off from the White House last month.
Lane and many other victims' families traveled to Washington, D.C. time after time in the 595 days since the crash, pushing for changes that he hopes will be approved before the tragedy that cut his family in half fades any further from the headlines.
“We can tell them stories, we can ask questions. We can push for answers. We can take action. That’s the work that belongs to us. But we cannot do anybody else’s work for them,” Lane said. “We need the people with the power to turn this tragedy into change to do theirs and to finish it.”
Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell and NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said it would be a shame to reach the second anniversary of the crash that happened on Jan. 29, 2025 without Congress passing the reforms her agency recommended and the Federal Aviation Administration and Defense Department making more safety improvements. Cruz said he hopes Congress will be able to pass a bill during the lame duck session that will follow November's elections.
Families say airlines and Congress should push for safety
Rachel Feres, who lost her cousin and his wife and two young daughters in the crash, said she can’t believe there's still debate about whether pilots transporting hundreds of passengers should have the best collision-avoidance technology available, when most modern cars come equipped with arrays of sensors to check blind spots and even apply the brakes in an emergency.
Feres and the other families have been surprised at the amount of lobbying against requiring all planes flying in crowded airspace to be equipped with existing technology that can help pilots know the location of all other aircraft flying nearby. Homendy has said those ADS-B In systems would have prevented this crash. Some airlines have endorsed them, but cost concerns from other airlines and private plane owners have been a stumbling block.
The airlines have the money and power to get this done, Feres said. “This is not about whether you can afford to act ... you have the leverage, you have the voice. The question is why safety so rarely gets the same urgency as the next quarterly earnings report.”
“Do the thing you would demand if your wife and son were on that airplane. Do what you would do if your granddaughter was traveling home with her teddy bear. You know how to move fast when money is on the line. Move fast when lives are,” Feres said.
Private planes can use a portable device and an Ipad to get locations
But some airlines have already begun to add the technology to their planes, partly because in addition to the safety benefits, the systems can help increase the number of planes that can fly into an airport by spacing them more precisely. American Airlines leads the industry, having added the technology to its Airbus A321s over the past several years, equipping more than 300 of its roughly 1,000 planes to date, but the systems aren't yet standard equipment on all planes.
Roughly three quarters of the pilots of business jets and smaller single-engine Cessnas and Bonanzas use portable devices that only cost $400. They can tap into this location data and display the information about nearby aircraft on an iPad.
The safety reform bills stalled earlier this year when the narrower Senate bill came up one vote short in the House after the military reversed course and opposed it at the last minute. And lawmakers have had trouble reconciling the Senate bill with the more comprehensive House version that took a different approach on several key points.
Homendy said the victims' families deserve to see more action.
“We can’t spend another moment looking them in the eye and doing nothing. We have to. We have an obligation,” Homendy said. “We owe it to these families. We owe it to passengers. We owe it to the traveling public. We owe it to cargo pilots and so much more to improve safety now.”
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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report from Des Moines, Iowa.
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