A jet colliding into a river: A challenge for the airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National airport and the last major aviation accident in the United States
Federal aviation officials said that a commercial airplane and a helicopter collided in midair as the plane was approaching a runway at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The accident happened as the jet, operated by regional carrier PSA Airlines on behalf of American Airlines, was attempting to land just before 9 pm local time.
The JFK center had a live camera which showed a helicopter and a passenger jet colliding at a low altitude. Tracking websites show that the passenger jet is believed to have plummeted into the river.
The jet was operating as flight 5342 for American Airlines and was on its way to Reagan airport in Washington, DC.
The airspace in and around DCA is complicated due to challenging approaches into the airport as well as flight restrictions above government buildings. It’s particularly busy airspace too with an influx of police and military helicopters operating in the area.
The last major commercial airplane accident in the United States occurred in 2009, when a Colgan Air flight crashed near Buffalo killing a total of 50 people (49 passengers and crew, and one person inside a house).
The Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport: What Happens When America Can Fly Across the Potomac River from Maryland, Virginia to Washington D.C.
“We are seeing some of it in the airspace around the world.” Cox told Morning Edition that they are looking at technology. We’re looking towards training to try and alleviate any time that the aircraft get closer together than they should.
“They’ve tried to make the argument that we have a couple of other airports here, and let’s spread the traffic out among the airports to get around the congestion issue,” he told Steve Inskeep.
A plan to expand the airport was included in a bill that reauthorized the FAA last year despite warnings of dangerous conditions there from politicians in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C.
American Airlines flew more than 13 million passengers out of Reagan National Airport in the decade of 1993 to 2023. American Airlines handles 53 percent of the commercial passenger traffic at the airport.
Over 2 million people traveled through the airport in its first year. President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill in 1998 that renamed the airport after the 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose the airport’s location in 1938 after Congress debated the need for it, but failed to take action. Washington National Airport first opened for flights on June 16, 1941, with American Airlines winning a contest on which airline would land there first.
The airport has 58 gates and its designator name among airlines is DCA. The American Airlines flight was scheduled to land on runway 33, which was the second of three runways.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. The airport spans nearly 900 acres, including 733 acres of land and 127 acres underwater.
There were more than 23,000 flight operations out of DCA each month in 2024, according to airport authorities — an average of 812 per day. More than 24 million people were passengers at the airport between January 2024 and November 2024, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Colliding American Airlines and an Army Black Hawks Helicopter: A Photon-Proton Collision at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
American Airlines flight collided with an Army Black Hawks helicopter in the sky at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night.