Grieving families press Congress on aviation safety reforms after midair collision near DC

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing Thursday (Feb 12) to highlight why the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending since 2008 that all aircraft be equipped with one system that can broadcast their locations and another one to receive data about the location of other aircraft. Only the system that broadcasts location is currently required. The hearing will review all 50 of the NTSB’s recommendations to prevent another midair collision like that of Jan 29, 2025.

Everyone aboard the helicopter and the American Airlines jet flying from Wichita, Kansas, including 28 members of the figure skating community, died when the aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River.

The Senate already unanimously approved the bill that would require all aircraft flying around busy airports to have both kinds of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems installed. However, leaders of the key House committees seem to want to craft their own comprehensive bill addressing all the NTSB recommendations instead of immediately passing what’s known as the ROTOR act. The ADS-B Out systems continually broadcast an aircraft’s location and speed and have been required since 2020. But ADS-B In systems that can receive those signals and create a display showing pilots were all air traffic is located around them are not standard.

FACING HEADWINDS IN THE HOUSE

Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz said he’s concerned that some people are talking about possibly adding loopholes to the bill that would exempt regional airlines and private jets from the mandate. The Texas Republican said that would undermine the effort, and doesn’t make sense given that the plane involved in this collision was flown by a regional airline.

“Flying can only be safe when everyone follows the same standards,” Cruz said. He said that he hopes the House will vote on the bill in the next two weeks to send it to the president’s desk.

But Rep. Sam Graves, who leads the House Transportation Committee, said Thursday that he doesn’t plan to consider the Senate bill.

“I haven’t looked a whole lot at the ROTOR Act. We’re going to do our own bill,” Graves said.

If the American Airlines jet and the helicopter had also been equipped with one of the ADS-B In systems that can receive location data, the NTSB and the victims’ families and key lawmakers say, the pilots may have been able to avoid the collision because they would have received nearly a minute of advanced warning.

The receiving systems would have provided more warning along with an indication of where the other aircraft was. But for that to work the helicopter’s ADS-B Out system that’s supposed to broadcast its location would have to be turned on and working correctly, which wasn’t the case on the night of the crash.