Nearly eight months after a deadly collision occurred near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General announced Friday that it would open a probe into the Federal Aviation Administration’s handling of the airspace around the international airport.
The inciting incident for the investigation was the midair crash that occurred this January when a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet, killing 67 people. But, per the IG’s announcement, that was just one of many near-disasters that have occurred at their airport in recent years. The National Transportation Safety Board found 15,000 close-proximity incidents happened in the airport’s airspace between October 2021 and December 2024—many of which involved commercial airplanes.
Last week, an investigative hearing on the crash revealed that just one air traffic controller was managing both helicopter and airplane traffic at the time of the collision. It also found that the Black Hawk involved in the deadly crash was dealing with a technical issue that kept a device known as ADS-B Out from functioning properly, which would have broadcast the helicopter’s position, altitude, and other information to air traffic control and other nearby aircraft. Policies at the Reagan airport did not require helicopters to transmit ADS-B Out data at the time of the incident, according to an Army official who spoke at the hearing.
Those revelations have the IG office looking further into the case. The watchdog will investigate the FAA’s policies and procedures around providing ADS-B Out exemptions at the airport, as well as how the agency handles air traffic control management. The review is set to begin this month.
The findings of the IG office should be interesting, if not harrowing. There has been a shortage of air traffic controllers for years now, which was not improved by the Trump administration’s hiring freeze nor its plan to keep ATCs from retiring after turning 56, despite the obvious need for sharp eyes and mind while on the job. The fact that there are constant near-misses, including a non-deadly collision on the runway of Reagan earlier this year that involved a plane with sitting members of Congress onboard, suggests there are some fundamental problems with the way the FAA is currently operating.
The Trump of it all may get in the way of ever actually improving anything, though. Earlier this year, he fired the sitting Inspector General at the Department of Transportation, so the office is currently operating with an acting IG and no chief counsel. Thus far, the only explanation we’ve gotten out of Trump for the crash is when he blamed it on DEI hires. That does not exactly inspire confidence that we’re going to get meaningful reform out of this whole situation.
