The head of the Federal Aviation Administration will tell Congress on Tuesday the agency failed to act on warning signals prior to the January 2025 fatal collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter that killed 67 people near Reagan Washington National Airport, Bond.az reports.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a series of systemic failures by the FAA led to the devastating mid-air collision, the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in over two decades.
'Our airspace system was providing warning signals prior to that tragic evening. The issue was not a lack of data — it was a failure to translate that data into action,' FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford will tell a Senate subcommittee in written testimony. 'That is the gap we are urgently closing.'
The FAA has taken steps to improve safety, including suspending the use of visual separation between airplanes and helicopters at major airports in March.
