The fatal midair collision Wednesday between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter has revived concerns about aviation safety in the country, given that it followed a string of near misses at airports over the last several years.
Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, where the crash happened, had at least two close calls last year. In April, a plane operated by Southwest Airlines nearly crossed the same runway that a JetBlue flight was using to take off. A month later, an American Airlines jet almost crashed with a small airplane.
Those near misses were among the 1,757 “runway incursions” documented by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2024. The term describes incidents involving the incorrect presence of an aircraft, person or other vehicle on a runway, and can range from minor (with no immediate safety consequences) to serious (in which a collision was narrowly avoided).
The collision Wednesday was the first fatal disaster involving a U.S. commercial aircraft since 2009, when a propeller plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, killing 45 passengers, four crew members and one person on the ground.
The American Airlines jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, while three people were onboard the Black Hawk helicopter. The flight was approaching the Washington, D.C.-area airport to land when the collision occurred over the Potomac River around 9 p.m. ET.
Officials said no survivors were expected.
Midair collisions like this are rare and considered a worst-case scenario, but even the list of close calls in recent years should have been a wake-up call to the aviation sector, according to Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that focuses on aviation safety research and advocacy.
“Even one is one too many,” he said.
The near misses in 2024 followed several high-profile incidents that the National Transportation Safety Board investigated the prior year, including one in August 2023 in which a Boeing 737 operated by Southwest Airlines came within 100 feet of a private Cessna Citation 560X jet landing on a runway in San Diego.
Earlier that year, a FedEx cargo plane narrowly missed crashing into a Southwest Airlines passenger plane after both vehicles were cleared to use the same runway at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The NTSB determined that the incident was the result of an air traffic controller error and a lack of critical safety technology to deal with dense fog around the airport that day.
Aviation safety experts have repeatedly raised concerns about a persistent shortage of U.S. air traffic controllers, which they say has played a role in recent near misses. No cause has been determined in Wednesday’s tragic crash, but it is nonetheless increasing scrutiny on the FAA over staffing shortages.
“Over the past two years, there have been several FAA facilities that have been struggling with having enough qualified personnel to be able to handle the traffic,” Shahidi said.
A person with knowledge of the situation told NBC News that staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night was “not normal” for the time of day and amount of traffic. One controller normally focuses on helicopter traffic, the individual said, but those responsibilities were combined with another controller’s Wednesday night. That kind of shift is acceptable under FAA safety standards. The staffing details were part of a preliminary internal report that has not been made public.
The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FAA’s latest workforce plan said the agency was short 3,000 controllers to fill air traffic control stations and towers across the country as of May, according to Airlines for America, a trade association representing U.S. airlines. In September, the FAA announced it had hired 1,811 new air traffic controllers in the 2024 fiscal year, and that the agency had more than 14,000 air traffic controllers in total and 3,400 people in training.
Shahidi said the shortages have stemmed in part from attrition among recruits and rules requiring air traffic controllers to retire at age 56.
Even adding new hires cannot immediately make up for existing shortages, he added.
“If you hire somebody today and get them to air traffic control school and take them through all the training, it will take two years before that individual is fully qualified,” Shahidi said.
A 2023 report from an independent aviation review panel similarly cited shortages of air traffic controllers as a major problem for the FAA. In addition, the 52-page report highlighted the agency’s outdated systems and inadequate funding as needing “urgent action” to prevent crashes.
“The FAA continues to be asked to do more with less in an already strained system, and the series of serious incidents in early 2023 illuminate significant challenges to the provision and safety oversight of air traffic services,” the report said.
Shahidi said Reagan Washington National Airport, in particular, can be risky because the airspace is “very complex” and heavily trafficked. The airport’s three runways are among the busiest in the country.
“That airspace is unforgiving and there is little room for mistakes,” he said. “The margin for error is very, very small to nonexistent.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told NBC News that he had been “dreading in my heart” an incident like this since an FAA bill passed last May authorizing five additional flights to the airport.
Still, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the helicopter and jet were in a “standard pattern” Wednesday night, and that there was “standard communication” between the aircraft and air traffic controllers.
Duffy added, however: “Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.”