I had to wait several days before even sitting down to think about writing about the crash of American Eagle flight 5342 operated by PSA Airlines. The initial shock gave way to anger as the government put forth one of the most absurd responses to an airline accident I’ve ever seen. And now, it’s just a swirling mix of sadness and fear for what the future may bring after an accident that by its very nature of having happened in Washington, DC is bound to be driven by political winds instead of sanity.
We all know the basics of what happened by now. It was just before 9pm Eastern Time on January 29 when American Eagle 5342 — a CRJ-700 coming from Wichita, operated by American’s wholly-owned subsidiary PSA — was on final approach into Washington/National airport (DCA) . It was originally planning to land on runway 1, but a very standard request to have the airplane circle to land on runway 33 was given. The pilots accepted.
At the same time, a Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission. It was heading south, flying a visual approach toward DCA and was supposed to stay under 200 feet. The controller asked the helicopter to confirm that it had the PSA aircraft in sight, and that was indeed confirmed. Moments later, the helicopter ran right into the CRJ at what appears to be an altitude slightly above 200 feet. Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, and all onboard were lost. That includes 60 passengers, 2 pilots, and 2 flight attendants on the CRJ-700 along with 3 crew on the Black Hawk.
That evening created a mix of awful emotions in me. There was just the pure shock of the first US airline hull loss resulting in fatalities since 2009 when the Colgan Q400 went down in Buffalo. There was also an eerie sense of familiarity. I went to George Washington University, and I spent plenty of time at Gravelly Point watching airplanes. I volunteered for Travelers Aid in the airport itself. It hits different when you can picture exactly what happened and where.
And then there was the strange historical coincidence that this was a mid-air collision operated by a PSA T-tail. Of course, this is a different PSA than the one that had a 727 collide with a Cessna 172 when they lost visual separation, but that accident — which remains the worst in California history — still looms large even nearly 50 years later. The reminder just added to that emotional stew.
Adding to the mix of feelings was a strange one I did not expect — positivity. How so? Well, American did a great job of communicating during the aftermath. American owns PSA outright, and it treated this as its own. There was no deferring media to talk to someone at the subsidiary. I had a statement from the airline in my inbox very early on.
It wasn’t much later that evening when CEO Robert Isom put out a near perfect video. As I said over on Bluesky at the time, this was a good message that was informative, timely, and struck the right tone.
Robert looked and sounded distraught, and you know what? I have no doubt he was. Airline comms are so much better when they don’t try to polish things. Further updates continued to be posted and linked from the airline’s homepage.
This positive feeling was fleeting, of course, in the face of such tragedy, but it was completely extinguished in the hours to come, starting with the absolute disaster of a press conference hosted by President Trump the following morning. I expect speculation from social media and elsewhere, but I do not expect it to come from the President of the United States. Well, I mean, I do expect that now, but it’s not something I expect from the office of the President.
Buried under the slurs against DEI, President Obama, President Biden, and Secretary Buttiegeg was a grave concern about air traffic control staffing. This is and has been an issue for ages, but there is nothing to suggest that it contributed to the crash. Still, because it had been put out there, now media outlets started cranking out stories about how the tower was understaffed. This takes away from the important work that needs to be done in relation to this accident itself.
Further taking away from that important work is the parade of ass-kissing that now seems to be required. It wasn’t surprising to see praise for President Trump flow from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance. But this brutal statement pushed out by American CEO Robert Isom shows how deep this goes.
We are all hurting as we continue to grieve the loss of our passengers and team members. I thank President Trump for his leadership on aviation safety. I applaud him, Secretary Duffy and the Administration for taking quick and decisive action today to restrict helicopter activity around DCA. In the days ahead, we will work tirelessly with the Administration and leaders in Congress to make our aviation system even safer, including by increasing investments in infrastructure, technology and personnel.
This is distracting at best. Now to be fair, the FAA’s decision to limit helicopter traffic around DCA is helpful. It’s also a sensible change despite not knowing what actually happened yet. This is a bandage, but it has an immediate impact. My worry is that we will quickly move beyond sensible measures and into something far worse thanks to political pressures.
Besides the understaffing in the air traffic control tower, I’ve seen accusations that the last minute change to have the PSA flight use runway 33 was a real problem. But again, there is no reason based on anything factual to suggest that these were issues that led to the accident. But even those who may be on the right path and blame the helicopter pilot for causing this disaster can’t know what led to this tragedy.
We know that the helicopter said it had the traffic in sight. Did it have the wrong traffic? Did it get distracted and the helicopter went off course? Was there a mechanical issue that led to the possible climb in altitude that has been reported? We have no idea. You can’t regulate until you know not just what happened but also WHY it happened.
I’m even more concerned about speculation than normal since DCA was involved. This is an airport that probably wouldn’t be open or at least wouldn’t be nearly as crowded if it wasn’t so close to the Capitol. All those Congresspeople care about is being able to fly home to their districts as quickly as possible and getting re-elected. The thought of going to Dulles… how dare you even say it!
That means that incentives are not aligned here. If an action to reduce capacity at the airport by, say, limiting the runways available for landing, were the right thing to do, it probably wouldn’t happen because it would hurt Congress individually and collectively. At the same time, all politicians want to look like they’re doing something to fix what broke. This swirling cocktail of terrible means that it’s entirely possible we could end up with bad legislation that has nothing to do with what actually happened. (See The 1,500-hour rule is ridiculous to learn how legislation can go so wrong when facts are ignored.)
It’s all just so awful, but as always, we will learn in the long run how to prevent this from happening again. For now, we should just patiently wait, but it seems like that’s now impossible. So I find myself just bracing for there not to be too much damage done before we know what exactly went wrong here.
