A report states that military helicopter flights caused at least two planes to abort their landings at Reagan National Airport in the week leading up to a tragic collision that claimed the lives of 67 people.
The night before the collision involving an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, another aircraft had to inform the air traffic control tower that it needed to abort its landing to avert a potential crash with a helicopter, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Yet another plane arriving at DCA from Charlotte scrubbed its landing on Jan. 23, again because of a helicopter.
“We had to circle back around due to a helicopter in our flight path,” shared Richard Hart, a passenger on the flight on January 23, in an interview with the Washington Post. “I remember feeling it was strange at the time, but now it just feels incredibly tragic.”
A general view of Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday, January 30, 2025. An American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas collided with a Black Hawk helicopter while approaching the airport for landing the previous evening. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
Jim Brauchle, a former U.S. Air Force navigator who is now an attorney representing families of victims in aviation disasters, previously told Fox News Digital that keeping a lookout for obstacles can be difficult.
“Having flown at night, having tried to look and see traffic, I think most people would say, ‘Oh, how hard is it to miss an airliner,’ right? You should be able to see that. But it’s a lot more difficult than people would expect,” he said.
At night in an urban environment like Washington, D.C., or northern Virginia, pilots may not be able to see other aircraft and instead may rely on seeing anti-collision or landing lights, according to Brauchle. But different ambient lights from tall buildings and towers that are lit may make it difficult to distinguish which lights belong to other aircraft.
“What I’ve heard from the audio is that they called out to [air traffic control]. The helicopter said that he had the aircraft in sight,” the attorney said. “My guess is, and again, I’m just speculating, is they saw something that they thought was the airplane, whether it be a tower light, maybe it was another aircraft that was taking off. Whatever they thought they saw obviously wasn’t the aircraft.”
The cause of the collision is currently under investigation by the FAA and several other federal agencies.
The close call on Tuesday, the evening before the deadly collision, involved Republic Airways Flight 4514 from Connecticut, the Washington Post reported. The pilot told air traffic controllers it had to divert because of an emergency alert about helicopter traffic below the aircraft.
Flight tracker maps showed the plane was headed south along the Potomac River corridor towards Reagan National Airport but took a sharp turn to the west. It later landed safely at 8:16 p.m., the report said.
Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin, Greg Wehner and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
