The Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General’s Friday announcement comes a week after an investigative hearing on the midair collision between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet that killed 67 people.
During the hearing, members of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent government agency, grilled FAA officials on how they could have missed the problems that existed in the airspace around Reagan airport.
After the accident, the NTSB identified more than 15,000 incidents between October 2021 and December 2024 where commercial planes and helicopters came within an unsafe distance.
FAA leaders, including the regulator’s Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau, have acknowledged that risks were missed and the agency needs to do better going forward.
“The inspector general will have the FAA’s full support,” the agency said in a statement Friday. “There must never be another tragedy like the one on January 29 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.”
Since the midair collision, the FAA has restricted helicopter flights near the airport and curtailed exemptions that allow aircraft to fly without broadcasting their location using a technology known as ADS-B Out. The Army helicopter involved in the crash was equipped with but wasn’t transmitting data via ADS-B Out on the night of the crash.
An Army official said during last week’s hearing that there was a technical issue preventing the Black Hawk’s ADS-B Out from functioning properly, but the helicopter pilots also weren’t required to have it turned on under the policies at that time.
The Office of Inspector General said that as part of its audit, it’s assessing the FAA’s management of the airspace around Reagan airport, as well as policies and procedures for overseeing ADS-B Out exemptions. The watchdog said it plans to begin its review this month.
(Adds FAA’s statement in sixth paragraph.)
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