Even as we await a final report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on the collision of an American Airlines jet with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over a busy Washington, DC airport, the New York Times has put together a detailed report of the incident that exposes a perfect storm of errors that led to the fatal crash.
Inside The Cockpit: Why The Reagan National Midair Crash Was A Preventable Tragedy
The devastating midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 near Reagan National Airport in January 2025 was not the result of a single error or a systemic flaw alone. It was a tragic, preventable failure of leadership and judgment inside the helicopter cockpit at the most critical moment.
New details from a NTSB prelimiary report and New York Times investigation reveal that while a risky procedure called “visual separation” was in use, a critical failure occurred when Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, acting as instructor, did not take decisive control when Captain Rebecca Lobach, the pilot flying the Black Hawk, failed to descend to the mandated 200-foot altitude and did not turn left to avoid the oncoming American Eagle jet.
Even after repeated reminders to descend, Captain Lobach maintained an unsafe altitude that brought the helicopter into the path of AA 5342. In the final moments, Warrant Officer Eaves instructed her to turn–an action that could have saved dozens of lives. She did not. And critically, Eaves did not take the controls away or issue a forceful command as flight instructor.
This was not just a breakdown in standard procedure. It was a breakdown in Crew Resource Management (CRM), the very concept that has made modern aviation as safe as it is today. Instructors must intervene when junior pilots make safety-critical mistakes. The hesitancy to act decisively, whether out of deference to rank or fear of undermining an evaluation, sealed the fate of 67 souls aboard the two aircraft.
But other factors certainly contributed. Visual separation always carries risks, particularly in dense, low-altitude airspace. Night-vision goggles can complicate judgment under bright city lights. Reagan National’s tightly woven airspace left almost no margin for error. A single air traffic controller managing multiple duties that night may have faced an impossible workload.
But all of that still left a final chance in the cockpit to break the accident chain…and that chance slipped away.
The NTSB will issue a final report next year, but the early evidence points clearly to human factors that could have been corrected. Aviation safety depends on creating a culture where anyone, regardless of title or seniority, acts immediately when lives are at risk. That didn’t happen on January 29. The “why” part is still a mystery.
As travelers, we often assume aviation safety is about technology, regulation, and oversight. But as pilots know, it ultimately comes down to vigilance, humility, and decisive action when something feels wrong.
Captain Lobach was being evaluated that night. But the real evaluation was one of crew leadership under pressure, and the cost of a missed intervention was incalculable.
CONCLUSION
Reagan National remains one of the most challenging airports in the country, where seconds and feet matter. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that, “Having helicopters fly under landing aircraft, and allowing helicopter pilots to say, ‘I’ll maintain visual separation’ — that is not going to happen anymore.” But it’s also clear that cockpit discipline must matter just as much.
image: NTSB
the core cause of the accident was the FAA’s unwillingness to tell the DoD that its activities around DCA were too high risk and could not occur.
Operating under visual separation rules without ADS B with helicopter pilots that are not as experienced as commercial pilots was a disaster waiting to happen -and it nearly did many times before.
It has nothing to do with the party in charge because the unsafe conditions went on for decades.
Helicopters don’t even need to be over the river; they can operate inland.
I suspect the fact that the delays at DCA have come down since the accident says it was the DoD that has revised its operations and the country is safer because of it.
Does the FAA really have the authority to dictate the DOD? Wouldn’t the DOD just pull the national security card.
Whether the FAA has authority over the DoD is not as much the issue as whether the DoD is willing to say that their needs mean that one of the nation’s largest commercial airports should be severely constrained ir not closed. Right after the accident, there was a chorus of voices saying DCA should close as a commercial airport.
And yet the evidence is that the commercial flight was operating as it should and this initial report shows that the problem is with military operations and they have created unnecessary risk.
and the FAA clearly does have the authority to dictate rules around DCA because that has happened since this accident.
Again, the question is why the DoD needs to be operating in the same close space that commercial aircraft needs – and, at best, the answer is simply to reduce helicopter traffic over land which, to me, doesn’t seem to be a good enough reason to severely cut commercial capacity at DCA.
There will clearly be true national security reasons for ALL commercial activity to be paused at DCA but there was way too much comfort w/ compromised security that didn’t need to exist.
So it was the woman pilot
It was. And it was the male instructor. And it was the FAA’s lack of adequate response to multiple prior incidents. But you have your world view, and you’ll pick and choose which parts of an article to integrate and not integrate into your cognitive process in to support it, and I doubt that I or anyone else will change that.
So I guess this reply is kind of pointless.
It’s a direct response to the DoD mantra of “Diversity is Our Strength.”
Question…if the male instructor had taken the controls from the female instructee (who happened to hold a superior rank) would you have accused him of “mansplaining?”
Or would you have considered him a hero?
You know, you’re probably right. I bet the instructors’ last thoughts were, “I really should take over the controls, but i don’t want to be accused of mansplaining. Yea, I’ll just let her crash into a pla…”
Thank you for confirming that you would have accused him of mansplaining.
Helicopters have never had any sort of aerodynamic look . Why ? Because they are not aerodynamic .
They beat the air into submission!
Why does every NTSB investigation take a year? No matter how much data, electronic or eyewitness, physical evidence and testimony is available, it always take a year. Here the New York Times has compiled a report and it is accepted as accurate.
That’s a fair question – and something POTUS even promised would not take so long during his remarks the day after. No reason the final investigation report should not be finished and published by now.
Because everything must be verified with certainty .
A statement from Joe Schmo must be checked and double-checked .
What a shock. It was the foids fault.
So the male pilot is to blame for not rescuing the damsel in distress – interesting. It seems a bit more mansplaining and a nice hit of toxic masculinity could have averted this disaster.
You can always count on the woke mob to defend an alphabet DEI hire (who worked as a “social aide” in the Biden White House). Democrats have learned NOTHING from the 2024 election. Even the NY Times admitted that the party brand is toxic. Lowest polling numbers in modern history.
Who is the DEI hire here?
You’ve been online long enough to know the mantra “don’t feed the trolls”.
They’ve made their presence known, and they have no concern about anything other than their axe to grind. Let them have it, or refuse their posts. But you are certainly experienced enough to know the legitimate questions from the forced-air exhortations.
It def wasn’t the white male instructor
The instructor didn’t take over in time? Lol
The woman pilot didn’t listen to MULTIPLE requests to get out of the way.
She panicked or was EXTREMELY stubborn, and people died needlessly. Let’s call a spade a spade and not blame the instructor for not stepping in sooner.
Nah … females are Never Stubborn .
As an airline flight instructor, the instructor pilot, while not the pilot in command (the pilot was rated but on a re-currency flight) the flight instructor should have said, “I HAVE THE CONTROLS” the split second the pilot didn’t respond to his notice. Flight instruction is a hard job. Even though the instructor might not be the PIC, the real PIC thinks, more often than not, that the instructor is in command. There have been many times, while teaching general aviation, on a flight review that I’ve briefed the PIC that “YOU are the PIC on this flight” and have been forced to “I have the controls”. Where upon the flight is terminated and the pilot is forced to take remedial training before the next re-currency attempt.
No one should be defending Lobach’s poor judgement, but the sexist and anti-DEI attacks have no factual basis. Something tells me if any of the following pilots had been women the anti-DEI mob would have been out with pitchforks.
AA300 – 58 year old male captain panics, inadvertently applying excessive rudder input, causing an A321’s wing to strike the side of the runway causing the airframe to be written off. Then continues the flight to 20,000 feet with a damaged wing and goes into a rant blaming the aircraft stating “we don’t know what it does” before eventually deciding to return to JFK for optics. They had to be told by the rampers that they had severely damaged the wing. Much of the commentary around this accident was “this guy is being judged on the scariest moment of his career, it’s not fair” or “he’s a better pilot because of what he learned in this incident”, and was supportive of him continuing to fly for AA today.
UA 227 – 727 crashed short of runway in SLC after a white male captain forced the FO to fly an unstable approach, stopped the FO’s attempts to apply power to arrest the steep rate of descent, and took control from him in the last seconds. Then after killing half of his passengers and crew, he lied about when the attempt to add power occurred and suggested engine malfunction, which was contradicted both by the FO/Flight Engineer and the FDR. Captain had a checkered training history, having struggled with his jet transition coursework.
WN 1455 – male captain accepts and continues a high and fast unstable approach into Burbank, in a 737 near max landing weight on a short runway with a tailwind. Completely ignores MULTIPLE GPWS “sink rate” and “pull up” alerts. Meanwhile the first officer fails to make standard monitoring callouts or call for a go-around. The aircraft overran the runway and nearly hit a gas station.
Pinnacle airlines flight 3701 – male pilots killed themselves and crashed a perfectly operational CRJ because they wanted to screw around with the aircraft’s limitations.
I’m not trying to suggest that these pilots’ poor decisions are the only thing to blame in these accidents or pass judgement on them, but all of these are just a few examples of pilots who were objectively non-DEI hires doing things the “anti-woke” mob loves to believe would never have happened with the “merit-based” hiring before DEI efforts became commonplace. Reducing modern accidents and incidents to be about the race, gender, etc of the people involved is a naive, gross over-simplification that ultimately distracts attention from the circumstances that allowed this accident to happen.