'It Worked Until It Didn't': New Documents Show Two Near-Crashes at Reagan Airport the Day Before 67 Died

The Crash: What Happened on January 29, 2025

On January 29, 2025, American Airlines Flight 5342 — a Bombardier CRJ regional jet — collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with the call sign PAT25 during its approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). The collision occurred over the Potomac River. All 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed: 64 passengers and crew on the airliner, and the three crew members of the helicopter, per Wikipedia's 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision article. It was the deadliest aviation disaster in the United States in almost a quarter century, per CBS News.

The Army helicopter was flying a training mission that cut through Reagan National's airspace when it collided with the approaching commercial jet.

The Day Before: Two Close Calls Nobody Acted On

CBS News' 60 Minutes obtained internal safety reports revealing that on January 28, 2025 — one day before the fatal crash — there were two separate near-collisions between passenger jets and military helicopters at DCA.

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on January 28, a pair of Army helicopters approached Reagan National flying at a higher altitude than expected, creating confusion inside the control tower. Simultaneously, an American Airlines flight from Norfolk was descending toward the airport. A collision alarm sounded in the cockpit of the American Airlines jet, instructing the pilot to climb quickly to a higher altitude to avoid the helicopters. The flight ultimately landed safely, per CBS News.

Less than four hours later, when another Army helicopter approached, a different commercial flight from Connecticut — carrying approximately 80 passengers — was preparing to land. For at least the second time that day, a collision alarm sounded. The flight was forced to abort its landing. It also ultimately landed safely, per CBS News.

The following day, a third Army helicopter on a training mission — PAT25 — flew into the same airspace. This time, there was no safe outcome.

The Whistleblower: 'There Were Obvious Cracks in the System'

Emily Hanoka worked as an air traffic controller for nearly a decade, including at Reagan National Airport. Her shift in the control tower ended a few hours before the January 29 collision. She told 60 Minutes she is speaking publicly for the first time about the conditions she believes set the stage for the disaster.

"There were obvious cracks in the system, there were obvious holes," Hanoka said, per CBS News.

She described the tempo of aircraft movements at DCA as operating beyond its design parameters: "It was surprising walking into that work environment, how close aircraft were," she said. "This is what has to happen in order to make this airspace work. And it did work. It worked until it didn't."

Hanoka told 60 Minutes that air traffic controllers had warned the FAA repeatedly for more than a decade that the combination of passenger jets, military helicopters, police helicopters, and hospital helicopters in DCA's shared airspace was a recipe for disaster. She said "you had frontline controllers ringing that bell for years and years," per CBS News.

85 Near-Misses in Four Years

Hanoka's account is corroborated by the National Transportation Safety Board's own data. There were 85 near-midair collisions between helicopters and commercial aircraft in the Washington DCA airspace between 2021 and 2024, according to the NTSB, per CBS News. Recommendations were made to address the danger, but Hanoka said they never went far.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told 60 Minutes: "I'd say why do we always have to wait until people die to take action?" addressing passengers who regularly fly through DCA, per CBS News.

Why DCA Is Uniquely Dangerous

Reagan National is structurally unlike most major airports in the country. It is owned by the federal government — which means the number of daily flights is determined by Congress, not the airport authority or the FAA. Lawmakers have added at least 50 flights to the already-congested airport since 2000; they approved another 10 new daily flights in 2024, per CBS News citing Hanoka and airport data.

DCA now moves approximately 25 million passengers a year — 10 million more than its intended capacity, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), per CBS News.

The airport has only three short runways, and none of them run parallel. Runway 1 is the busiest runway in the country, per MWAA, with more than 800 flights per day — roughly one flight per minute, per CBS News.

Hanoka told 60 Minutes: "Some hours are overloaded, to the point where it's over the capacity that the airport can handle," per CBS News.

Beyond the runway congestion, DCA sits within one of the most complex and restricted airspaces in the world. Military, law enforcement, and hospital helicopters fly constant routes through the same controlled zone that handles commercial traffic. The Army Black Hawk that caused the January 2025 crash was flying a routine training mission that routed through the commercial approach corridors — a practice that the NTSB has since scrutinized.

The Families

Seven widows whose husbands were killed in the crash agreed to speak together to 60 Minutes. The men had been traveling home from a duck hunting trip in Kansas with a group of work friends when their flight was struck.

Jill Clagett described the moment she learned of the crash: she was in bed with her young daughters when she received a phone call. She said she slid out of bed without waking the children and turned on the television. "I remember just seeing the explosion," she told 60 Minutes, per CBS News.

Kayla Huffman, whose husband Alex was on the flight, recalled him telling her about the trip beforehand: "It literally looked like Christmas morning in his face," she told 60 Minutes, per CBS News.

In the hours after the crash, as divers searched the Potomac, Huffman received calls from Alex's friends asking if he had survived. She told 60 Minutes: "I said, 'No, he's dead. He's gone. And it's no longer a rescue. It's a recovery, which means there's no survivors, none.'"

Context: Part of a Pattern

The DCA crash was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since the November 2001 American Airlines Flight 587 crash in Queens, New York, which killed 265 people. The Reagan National collision killed 67, per Wikipedia.

The crash occurred amid a backdrop of significant aviation safety stress. Ranked has separately covered the March 2026 LaGuardia Airport crash — in which an Air Canada regional jet struck a Port Authority fire truck during landing, killing both pilots and injuring 41 more. That crash occurred while the TSA and DHS were in the midst of a government shutdown that had left TSA security lines running four hours long at some airports.

The FAA, which oversees air traffic control, is currently short approximately 3,000 air traffic controllers from its target staffing level, per data reported across multiple news organizations at the time of the LaGuardia crash. The staffing shortage — which has been building for years — was cited as a contributing factor to the stressed conditions Hanoka described at DCA.

Following the NTSB's year-long review of the Flight 5342 crash, the FAA announced a new safety requirement addressing helicopter operations in shared airspace. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described the review findings to 60 Minutes, noting what the safety investigation identified as "an overreliance on pilot 'see and avoid' operations that contribute to safety events involving helicopters and airplanes," per CBS News citing the FAA/NTSB review.