The Daily - What We Know About the Plane Crash

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

The midair collision between a passenger jet and a helicopter over Washington on Wednesday night was the deadliest plane crash in the United States in more than 20 years.Emily Steel, a Times investigative reporter who has been covering the crash, explains what happened.Guests: Emily Steel, an investigative reporter for the business desk of The New York Times.Background reading: The crash has renewed concerns about air safety lapses.Staffing was “not normal” in the control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport, according to an F.A.A. report.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroweth. This is The Daily. On Wednesday night, a passenger jet and a helicopter collided midair over Washington, D.C. It was the deadliest plane crash in the United States in more than 20 years. Today, my colleague Emily Steele explains what we know about what went wrong. It's Friday, January's 5.30 p.m. on Thursday, not even 24 hours after this awful plane crash in Washington. And we're talking to you because you've spent a lot of time investigating aviation safety.

Can you just explain what exactly happened on Wednesday night? So at 6.18 on Wednesday night night there's an American Airlines flight that takes off from Wichita, Kansas. It's going to Washington's Reagan National Airport and there are 64 people on board. There are American and Russian figure skaters, they are flying back from a competition, there's parents, there's coaches, there are a couple of friends who had just been coming back from a competition. There's parents, there's coaches, there are a couple of friends who had just been coming back from a hunting trip. This flight is scheduled to land at nine o'clock in Washington, D.C., where it's a clear night. And about that same time, there's a Black Hawk

helicopter. It's an Army helicopter, and there are two officers on board. There's a sergeant on board as well and they are conducting flight training in the area. So the jet from Wichita is on track to land on runway one at Reagan's National Airport. And the air traffic controller asks the pilot on board if they can land on a different runway, on runway 33 instead. So inside the cockpit on the American Airlines jet, the pilots are re-navigating their landing. You can imagine the people on the airplane are making sure that their seat belts are fastened, they might be able to look out and see the lights of the city. They're very, very close to their landing. It's about that time that there's an alert that

blares in the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport. The Army helicopter and the American Airlines jet are on a collision course. The controller asks the helicopter pilots, do you have this other jet in sight? And initially there's no response. And then the controller again directs the helicopter to fly behind the jet and then says, do you see this other airplane?

And the helicopter pilot confirms, yes yes they can see another airplane and then moments later there's a crash. Yeah Emily I saw a video of the crash and you just see this tiny dot of this helicopter flying towards the airplane and then they collide and there's this massive explosion it's terrifying. explosion. It's terrifying. Right. It's absolutely terrifying. There's a huge explosion over the Potomac River, which is right next to the airport, and that jet carrying 64 people falls into this icy cold river. Right away, there's a huge response with the police, the fire department, the airport

authorities. And by the next morning, the Washington DC fire chief has confirmed everybody's worst fears and suspicions that everyone on the plane and the helicopter died. That's 67 people. This is the worst aviation crash in American history in decades. Okay, I've covered plane crashes before the Boeing 737 MAX accidents specifically.

And so I know it takes a while for all the details to come out, but what do we know at this point about what went wrong here? How did this happen? There is a lot that we don't know about the specific factors that led to this crash. What we know is that there will be crash investigators

that will spend several months looking at flight data, looking at listening to the recordings from inside the cockpit, looking at the weather patterns and interviewing the controllers and others just to figure out what exactly went wrong. But one of the first things that we know that went drastically wrong is that the pilots of both aircrafts did not recognize that they were about to smash into each other. The pilots that

were involved in the crash were both described as experienced pilots. But what people that we've talked to today have said is that they think that the helicopter pilot saw another airplane that wasn't the American Airlines jet that it crashed into. So the helicopter pilot says, yes, I see this other plane, but in fact, the plane that they see is not the one they're headed to a direct collision with. Exactly. What we also know is that the military said today that the pilots on the helicopter were

wearing night goggles, which could have limited their vision. We don't know what they were seeing. We don't know if there were bright lights blaring into their eyes. We don't know if they mistook a different airplane for that American Airlines jet that they crashed into. Hmm, so potentially these pilots on the helicopter had visibility issues.

Yes. And what we've just learned is that the helicopter appears to have been flying outside of its approved flight path. That matches something that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said earlier today. he said that there had been a mistake and an elevation issue with the helicopter and we didn't know exactly what he was referring to. This kind of matches up with that. The helicopter was supposed to be flying closer to the bank of the Potomac River and lower to the ground as it came into the Reagan National Airspace. Oh, wow. So maybe they weren't even supposed to be there in the first place. But what about the air traffic controller?

I mean, isn't this the person who is literally supposed to be the eyes on the sky? Yes. The way that you described it is perfect. What those air traffic controllers are supposed to do is keep planes separated in the sky. They manage takeoffs and landings, and they make sure that planes and helicopters and other aircraft stay in safe distances from each other. But what several people that we've talked to today have said that the controller during this incident

should have been more proactive. They said that this guy didn't do enough. Instead of just alerting the pilot of the helicopter that there was traffic, they also could have called out to the American Airlines jet and to say, hey, there's this helicopter that's here, be on alert, be on alert. Instead of giving just these broad general descriptions to say, there's traffic, go behind the plane.

What people that we've talked to today have said is that they should have been more specific. They should have said, there's another aircraft at one o'clock and given the airplane, some vectoring or given the pilot some sort of vectoring or given the pilot specific directions of where to go and what to do to actively take those airplanes apart from each other's paths. In other words, the air traffic controller intervened but he didn't do so in a proactive or

aggressive enough way given the conditions, given what was happening. Exactly. And are there any theories about why that didn't happen in this case? So as I've mentioned, we are still learning why. We're still trying to figure out exactly what happened and what went wrong. What we do know is that we got our hands on an internal FAA safety report today. And what that showed is that the staffing at this air traffic control tower was not normal for the time of day or for the volume of traffic. controller who was handling the helicopters in that airport's vicinity was also instructing the planes that were landing and departing from the airport's runways. Those jobs are

typically handled by two different controllers rather than just one. You're saying you have one air traffic controller who's assigned essentially to two really important tasks here. They're monitoring not just the planes, but also the helicopters. Exactly. So, as you can imagine, if you are assigned to do two jobs, your job becomes more complicated. There's more tasks to do. These controllers are monitoring the skies around the nation's capital. There's helicopters buzzing in and out.

They're also managing the takeoffs and landings of these airplanes. This is an incredibly busy job. And on top of that, controllers often use different radio frequencies to communicate with the pilots on airplanes and the pilots who are flying helicopters. And so if that controller is communicating with the pilots of the helicopter and the jet at the same time, those two sets of pilots might not be able to hear each other, which adds to another level of why they might not have been able to see or hear or not be aware of the other aircraft in the sky. Emily, it certainly sounds like the idea of one air traffic controller with two really big jobs

in a really busy airspace could have been a factor here. I mean, could that explain a lot of what happened here? Yes, that is a very serious problem. But what we've learned is that it should never come down to one mistake or one bad decision. What has happened on Wednesday is what pilots, air traffic controllers, and safety experts have been warning for years. They fear and they've been very vocal that there are growing holes in the aviation system

that would inevitably lead to a deadly crash. We'll be right back. Emily, you said there have been growing holes in the system of aviation safety that made a disaster like what we saw on Wednesday possible, maybe even foreseeable. I know this is something you and our colleague Sydney Ember have reported on in the past. Remind us of what you found. Sydney and I spent a whole lot of time investigating airline safety and aviation safety in 2023. And we were able to get our hands on some internal data.

And what we saw was an alarming pattern of safety lapses. There were near misses in the skies and on the runways of the United States. And even though there hadn't been a major crash for more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents were happening far more frequently than anybody realized. And just explain that. What was the reason for that? The way that the safety net under US aviation works is that there are multiple layers of protection. There are pilots, there's air traffic controllers, there's technology, there are flight paths

and rules that the pilots are supposed to follow. And if one of those layers has a problem, the next layer is supposed to catch it. So what this showed was that there was a safety system that was undermounting stress. We saw that there were mistakes by air traffic controllers that had been stretched thin by a long, chronic nationwide staffing shortage. There are people who

have been working overtime for years. There are people who work six days a week and 10 hour days. We saw that there were errors by pilots, we found that there were huge technology issues, we found controllers in some towers that were pulling up their laptops and using a website. It's called flightradar.com. And they were just using this website to kind of jerry-rig a system to do what they thought was more safe. What?

Yeah. That's terrifying. It was terrifying. And even just the facilities in these air traffic control centers were crumbling. So what our reporting really showed is that there are layers of safety and layers of protection in aviation.

And they were all really starting to erode. And it was leading to this really stressful, very charged atmosphere where people inside the industry were saying, listen, pay attention to us, something bad is going to happen. And Emily, after your investigation came out, did anything change? Did the system get better? That's a really good question. There have been various studies, controllers supposedly have more time between shifts to sleep. But

when you talk to people in the industry, what they told us today is very little, if anything has changed. And you saw some of the signs of this unfold on Wednesday night. The air traffic control tower at Reagan Airport is chronically understaffed and has been for years. The data that we pulled shows that there were 19 controllers working in that tower. That's far below the target level of 30. And that's according to data from September, 2023. It's the most recent data that we found available.

What we know also is, according to this internal FAA safety report that we got our hands on today, it says the position configuration was not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic. And it's not just a labor issue. It's not just the fact that these people have been working six days a week and 10-hour shifts for a long period of time. But the safety of passengers flying in airplanes is in the hands of these controllers.

And so when they're tired, when they make mistakes, it can be catastrophic. Right. And I just want to say, just as an aside, the way that I actually found out about this crash was I got a message last night. It was at 9.50 PM from an air traffic controller that I spent a lot of time talking to in 2023.

And he said, I told you. Wow. I've been yelling about this for years. Nobody wanted to listen to us. Wow. I genuinely just got chills. I know. He also said, he said, I've been terrified of this exact reality for years. Here it is, absolutely horrific. And that was the thing, Natalie, when we were doing this reporting, these air traffic controllers are not supposed to talk to reporters. It's against their rules. And

you would have been shocked to know how many people violated that policy and picked up the phone and called us. And the reason why they spoke to us is because they already had been ringing alarm bells inside the FAA, inside the system for years. They filed internal reports, they filed safety reports, they talked to their supervisors and they said they just couldn't get anybody to pay attention and that's why they talked to us.

Emily, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In a news conference on Thursday, President Trump suggested that efforts to diversify the ranks of the FAA and hire people with disabilities were to blame for the accident in Washington. It's all under investigation. I understand that. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

Because I have common sense. Okay. When pushed on how he arrived at that conclusion, the president said he had no evidence, but was relying on, quote, common sense. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, three of President Trump's cabinet nominees were questioned before the Senate. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's pick for director of national intelligence, faced sharp questions about her stances on Syria and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Was Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? Senator, I will also repeat my answer. He broke the law. Your answer, yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America. She refused to denounce Edward Snowden, who leaked classified information about government surveillance programs in 2013, eliciting concern from senators on both sides of the aisle. Was he a traitor at the time when he took America's secrets, released them in public,

and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen? Senator, I'm focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again. The tense hearing suggested Gabbard would face a challenging confirmation battle. In his hearing, Cash Patel, Trump's choice to run the FBI, tried to evade questions about whether he would investigate officials on a list of his perceived enemies and promised not to launch politically motivated investigations. There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI should I be confirmed as the FBI director.

He sought to distance himself from Trump, going so far as to suggest that he disagreed with the president's decision to pardon the January 6 rioters. I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement and I have, including in that group, specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on January 6th. And I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement. And in his second hearing for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his views on vaccinations in a tense session that featured shouting matches and a senator in tears.

In 2020, you were the single largest. Because I had four contributions from workers all over this country. Workers. Not a nickel from corporate actors. By the end, it was unclear whether Kennedy had persuaded one senator whose vote could be key to his future. The Louisiana Republican, Bill Cassidy. You know, before I ever entered politics,

before I was ever thinking about running for office, I practiced medicine for 30 years. So my concern is that if there's any false note, any undermining of a mama's trust in vaccines, another person will die from a vaccine preventable disease. Cassidy's a doctor, and he expressed deep concern about what he called Kennedy's quote, passive undermining confidence in vaccines. And he wondered whether Kennedy could change.

Will you continue what you have been or will you overturn a new leaf at age 70? That's my dilemma man and you may be hearing from me over the weekend. Kennedy can only afford to lose three Republican votes to win final confirmation. Later today, you can catch a new episode of The Daily right here. Michael Barbaro speaks with Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Charlie Savage about President Trump's plan to make a more powerful presidency permanent. Today's episode was produced by Astha Chathurvedi and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Devon Taylor,

contains original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Marian Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wunderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Kittroweth. See you on Monday.