Hearings to examine the National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report, focusing on the DCA midair collision.
Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations, and Innovation
2025-03-27
Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
We will come to order. The Subcommittee on Aviation and Space of the United States Senate's Committee on Commerce convenes today for what I consider a very important hearing. Fifty-seven days ago, our nation witnessed the first major U.S. commercial passenger flight crash in nearly 16 years. Families had their loved ones taken from them in an instant. Children lost their parents. Husbands lost their wives. A Kansas couple lost their daughter. And a rural community in our state called Kiowa lost a husband and wife, a pillar of the community, who were traveling to visit their daughter in college. I've taken that American flight before. There were many Kansans on that flight. and several of the members of this committee lost constituents on the American Airlines Flight 5342 and the Army's Black Hawk helicopter. In addition to the families who are grieving, our first responders made heroic efforts to find survivors and save lives, and the investigators have spent nearly two months searching the Potomac River and working to reconstruct wreckage to find answers. It has been a difficult 57 days. 67 lives that were lost on January 29th were taken prematurely in an accident that by all indications should have been avoided. Now the families of these victims, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Army, and Congress are tasked with how to best honor the memory
and make certain accidents like this never happen again. I want to highlight NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and NTSB Board for their diligence and transparency throughout the investigations. That job obviously is not an easy one, but it's been done with professionalism and care. It's their work that brings us here today to review. NTSB's preliminary report into the mid-air collision provides insight into the events of January 29th, but many questions, certainly in my view, many questions still need to be answered, not only by the NTSB's investigation, but by our nation's aviation safety regulator and by the Army. The preliminary report provides alarming statistics in using existing FAA data on the risks at DCA to aviation safety. That data includes and NTSB provides these numbers. In a 13 year period, not a single month went by without at least one quote close call between a helicopter and a commercial jet operating at DCA. Between October 21 and December 24, there were 85 incidents where the lateral separation between a commercial jet and a helicopter was less than 1,500 feet, and the vertical separation was less than 200 feet. And during that same timeframe, there were more than 15,000, quote, close proximity events between a helicopter and a commercial airplane. the NTSB findings that it is possible for a helicopter on Route 4 to have as little as 75 feet of vertical separation from airplanes on approach to runway 33.
I commend the NTSB for issuing urgent safety recommendations, and I commend the FAA in acting to implement them, particularly the permit restriction of nonessential helicopter operations at DCA. However, I want to know how, with these statistics in the FAA files, why prior to January 29th, the agency failed to improve safety protocols at Reagan National Airport. This committee worked tirelessly to pass an FAA reauthorization bill last Congress that prioritized safety, enabling our industry to continue innovating and equipping the FAA with the resources necessary to keep our skies safe. We need a permanent, confirmed FAA administrator to implement this important framework for the future of the industry. President Trump recently nominated Brian Bedford to lead the FAA, and I look forward to his testimony before this committee in the near future. I commend Secretary Duffy for his push to modernize airspace, and I look forward to this subcommittee working together to keep America's traveling public safe and improve public trust in our air travel system. Demand for commercial aviation is expected to grow 4% each year over the next two decades, and along with new technology and commercial spacecraft entering our airspace. This will further place demands upon our airspace and require the tools and guidelines to ensure a safe airspace. American Airlines Flight 5342 and Priority Air Transport 25 carried innocent civilians, selfless service members, talented figure skaters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, And while Congress' response to the January 29th ought to be deliberate and not executed in a knee-jerk fashion, Congress must make certain that this loss of life occurs never again.
In this early investigation, we have many unresolved questions. Among those, for me, is why was the ADS-B out, not transmitting on the Blackhawk? Was it turned off or was there equipment malfunction? Why had precautions not been taken to mitigate the risks of collisions between commercial aircraft and rotor wing near DCA? The statistics I just described. What is the severity of this issue at other airports where combined traffic is also high? What explains the discrepancy between the altitude readings of the crew of the Black Hawk? Why did the Blackhawks' invalid pressure altitude data influence other systems that utilize this source? How the use of night vision goggles may have impacted the Blackhawk helicopter pilot's line of vision? And finally, how should the FAA evaluate combining duties of air traffic controllers? I'm appreciative for our witnesses being here today. I know they each take this circumstance seriously. I'm anxious to hear the discussion that they have with this committee, and the end result should be a better understanding, as well as working to identify and prevent tragedies today and into the future.
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