Key senators and families of the 67 dead in A plane collides with a military helicopter People near the nation’s capital are convinced that advanced aircraft positioning systems recommended by experts nearly two decades ago would have prevented last year’s tragedy. But it remains unclear whether Congress will approve a bill requiring regulations around busy airports.
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Thursday to shed light on why the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended since 2008 that all planes be equipped with one system that can broadcast their positions and another system to receive data about the location of other planes. Currently only the system that broadcasts the location is required. The hearing will review all 50 of the NTSB’s recommendations to prevent another mid-air collision like the one that occurred on January 29, 2025.
They are all on board the helicopter and the American Airlines plane flying from Wichita, Kansas, including… 28 members of the snowboarding communityHe died when the plane collided and fell into the Potomac Glacier.
The entire Senate already The bill was unanimously approved This requires all aircraft flying around busy airports to install both types of broadcast and automatic dependent surveillance systems. However, leaders of key House committees appear to want to craft their own comprehensive bill that addresses all of the NTSB’s recommendations rather than pass what is known right away. Vertigo law. the ADS-B exit systems Continuously broadcasting the aircraft’s position and speed has been in demand since 2020. But ADS-B in systems that can receive those signals and create a display that shows pilots that all the air traffic is around them is not standard.
If the American Airlines plane had been equipped with one of the ADS-B systems that could receive position data, the NTSB, victims’ families and key lawmakers say, the pilots might have been able to stop in time to avoid a Black Hawk that inexplicably stepped into the plane’s path.
The receiving systems should have provided about a minute’s warning with an indication of the helicopter’s location instead of the 19-second warning that pilots received with the plane’s onboard collision avoidance system. But for the helicopter’s ADS-B system, which is supposed to broadcast its location, to work, it must be on and working properly, which was not the case the night of the accident.
But these positioning systems are one measure that may have been able to overcome all of the systemic problems and errors identified by the NTSB in the disaster. That’s why NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy — who will be the only witness at the hearing — and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and all senators endorsed it.
“This seems like a no-brainer, right? Especially since this is nothing new that they’re proposing,” said Amy Hunter, whose cousin Peter Livingston died on the plane with his wife and two young daughters.
Subsequently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Several changes Including prohibiting helicopters from flying along the route where the accident occurred any time the aircraft lands on the secondary runway at Reagan National Airport.
The anniversary of the accident and the NTSB’s hearing into the causes of the accident have made it a major challenge for the victims’ families in recent weeks. And now Olympic Games They remind Hunter and others that their loved ones – like young Everly and Alydia Livingston – will never have a chance to fulfill their dreams of competing for a gold medal.
The biggest stumbling block is cost concerns. Upgrading some airline planes can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, putting a prohibitive burden on some — especially regional airlines with tight margins like the one that flew the plane that collided with the Army helicopter. Some worry about whether general aviation pilots will be able to afford upgrades, too.
Any aircraft more than a decade old will likely not have any of these systems installed, while most aircraft newer than that will at least have an ADS-B system out broadcasting their location.
But nearly three-quarters of pilots of business jets and smaller single-engine Cessna and Bonanza jets use multi-hundred-dollar handheld devices made by companies like ForeFlight that can tap into that location data and display information about nearby planes on an iPad. So it doesn’t seem like the legislation will create significant expenses for them.
Tim Lilley, a pilot himself, said the presence of these two GPS systems would have saved the lives of his son Sam, who was the plane’s co-pilot, and everyone else who died. Owners of small planes have an affordable option, but even expensive upgrades to larger planes will be worth it, he said.
“If these recommendations had been fully implemented, this incident would not have occurred,” Lilly said. “I don’t know what value we place on human life, but 67 people are still here today.”