Airline pilots have warned of the potential dangers that helicopters posed in the Washington area before the fatal crash at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night.
A database of aviation safety issues maintained by NASA details two startling incidents in recent years that involved passenger jets nearly colliding with helicopters near the airport. The database contains confidential, anonymized safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation.
In April 2024, an airline captain reported nearly crashing into a helicopter while approaching Reagan National. Just as the jet was configured to land, the plane’s anti-collision technology alerted its pilots that there was a helicopter about 300 feet below the airplane and climbing slowly. Pilots wrenched the plane away from a potential collision before landing safely.
The captain reported that pilots on the jet never received a warning from air traffic controllers about the helicopter and that the pilots couldn’t see it, so they had been “unaware it was there.”
The safety report included a prescient warning: put safer distances between the planes landing at Reagan and the helicopters flying up and down the Potomac River near the airport.
A similar incident occurred in October 2022, when an airline captain reported almost colliding with a helicopter lifting off from a nearby hospital. The jet’s anti-collision technology alerted pilots to the potential disaster, sounding the alarm in the cockpit to immediately move the plane to a higher altitude. The captain estimated that the plane came within 300 feet or less of the helicopter.
