Investigators painted a devastating picture today of numerous mistakes and government failures that converged at a tragic point 85m above the Potomac River on January 29, in the fullest public airing of factors in the collision of a regional passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that cost 67 lives.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators grilled Federal Aviation Administration and Army officials for not taking action after years of warnings from air traffic controllers and others about dangers in the busy airspace around Reagan National Airport, which is crowded with military and civilian aircraft.

They released thousands of pages of documents about equipment faults aboard Army helicopters, confusion and limited visibility for the helicopter crew on the night of the crash, control tower staffing, and missed opportunities to reduce clear risks.

The documents - released at the start of three days of public hearings on the crash - include the first account from the frontline air traffic controller in National’s tower. He was handling two jobs at once and told investigators that he had been getting “overwhelmed” just 15 minutes before the crash.

An airline pilot picked up on that, telling investigators the controller seemed unusually busy and overloaded.

The controller said he relied on the helicopter crew to avoid the airliner, but they appeared not to have seen the jet even seconds before impact.

The roots of the problems began long before that night, according to NTSB documents.

The Army’s helicopters had altimeters that gave erroneous readouts to pilots flying in the sensitive airspace, which has a 200-foot (61m) height limit.

And before the crash, a FAA regional manager blocked a proposal to move the helicopter route away from the danger zone of intersecting flight routes where the crash happened, deeming the idea “too political”.

The safety board is not expected to reach its final conclusions about the causes of the crash and issue safety recommendations until next year.

• Airport workers arrested, accused of leaking video after Washington DC plane crash
• Olympic ice skating legend breaks down over plane crash tragedy
• Watch: Traffic control radar shows moment of deadly plane crash; Trump blames ‘diversity’
• Potomac plane crash: Former Russian ice skating world champs among victims as search continues for survivors
• At least 18 bodies pulled from river as desperate search for US plane crash survivors continues

But taken together, the full day of testimony and thousands of pages of documents provide the clearest accounting yet of what led up to the crash.

And board members grew frustrated with what they called inadequate responses from Army and FAA officials.

“You guys are pointing out, ‘Well, our bureaucratic process, somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium,’” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

“Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead. How do you explain that?”

Several dozen family members of the victims attended the hearing.

“I just want those responsible to be held accountable,” said Aisha Duggins, whose sister, Kiah, died in the crash. “I do not appreciate the rigmarole and the attempt to skirt responsibility.”

A crane removes wreckage from the Potomac River, where a jet and a military helicopter collided. Photo / Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

On the night of the crash, the Army helicopter on a routine training mission with a crew of three was hurtling south down the Potomac River.

In addition to getting faulty readings from an altimeter, the crew members were coping with poor radio communication quality - one of the crew called it “crappy”, according to a cockpit recorder transcript released today - and were probably wearing night-vision goggles that limited their field of view and boosted the glare from surrounding urban lights.

The American Airlines regional jet, inbound from Wichita, was swooping in to land on runway 33 with 64 passengers and crew members.

In the tower at National, one controller was handling two sets of duties, managing both helicopters and jets, according to the documents and transcripts of interviews released by the NTSB.

Shortly before the Army helicopter checked in for the first time, the controller told investigators that he had been considering asking for additional help managing the combined traffic.

“I was starting to become a little overwhelmed with the helicopters but it was like as soon as I was about to say something, then I got rid of the few helicopters,” said the controller, whose name is redacted in the NTSB records. “So for me, it was manageable.”

A pilot on the flight into National before the crash told investigators the air traffic controller that night seemed “exceptionally busy” and was “not instilling a lot of confidence” because he was changing his mind on clearances.

The controller “seemed a little bit … overloaded”, PSA Airlines captain Kevin Ashe told investigators, according to an interview transcript.

Ashe said what caught his attention was hearing the controller “giving clearances and there were a couple of times … where he changed his mind, to do one thing, but then no, do this.”

One of the most experienced aviators in the Army told NTSB investigators he was bewildered that the controller did not advise the Black Hawk crew to pause and allow the regional passenger jet to land, which he described as out of step with past practice.

If the airspace is congested and the aircraft landing on runway 33 are on a path to converge, air traffic controllers instruct helicopter crews flying south to halt at Hains Point near the airport, Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Van Vechten told investigators, according to a transcript released today. The typical practice is to hover or fly ellipses nearby until the jet passes.

“Not one single time ever did they let me cross the approach path of 33 … so I’ve never seen that allowed,” he said. “They’ve never even given the option to request visual separation.”

The controller told investigators that the decision about whether to direct a helicopter to hold is made on a case-by-case basis.

According to radio transcripts between the tower and aircraft, the Army helicopter crew confirmed that they could see the airliner and were flying under “visual separation” rules, meaning it was up to them to avoid the jet.

“That means that they see what they’re doing and they’re not going to be in that aircraft’s path … they’re not going to hit them,” the controller said.

The controller turned to other duties, but when he looked out of the tower window he said he saw that the Black Hawk was “way closer” to the airliner than it should have been.

An investigator asked the controller why he did not advise the jet crew about the approaching helicopter in that moment.

“I don’t think it would have made a difference honestly,” the controller said, before stumbling over his words and asking to pause the interview.

A Washington Post investigation has found it was possible that the Black Hawk crew mistook a distant airplane for Flight 5342 while the actual jet was obscured by the city’s bright lights.

A transcript of the discussion among the Black Hawk crew captured by the helicopter’s voice recorder does not indicate they saw the plane before impact.

The Army helicopter, operating from Davison Army Airfield in Virginia, was heading down the river using long-established routes. The helicopter had two types of altimeter: a barometric one that uses a measure of air pressure to determine altitude and a radio altimeter that bounces radio waves off the surface.

The NTSB found that throughout the flight, the Black Hawk crew called out elevations that were about 30m lower than the altitude recorded by their radio altimeter - a critical discrepancy in an area where helicopters were required to follow strict height limits.

Tests of three other Black Hawk helicopters from the same unit after the crash showed similar discrepancies of between 25 and 40m, investigators said.

An FAA study of 523 flights using the same route between January 1, 2024, and January 30, 2025, found that half flew above the 61m limit.

Army pilot instructor Kylene Lewis testified that there is not a “published standard” on when to use a barometric altimeter rather than an alternative radio altimeter. But under further questioning, Lewis said she would rely more on the radio system when flying low.

Investigators repeatedly highlighted that there was only a 23m distance between the commercial and helicopter flight paths at National Airport, but Lewis said an 24m discrepancy between altitude measures “would not be cause for alarm”.

That testimony appeared to conflict with federal safety guidelines. FAA policy says that if the discrepancy is 75ft (23m) or greater an altimeter is deemed “questionable” and should be referred for repair. A similar Army policy deems an altimeter “unreliable” if it is 70ft (21m) off.

Emergency response units search the crash site of the American Airlines plane on the Potomac River. Photo / Getty Images

In one striking exchange, safety board member Todd Inman pressed an Army engineer on whether known issues with the helicopter model involved in the crash were being addressed.

“So you don’t even know if you’re going to make any changes based upon the research we’ve already done?” Inman asked the engineer. “How much tolerance for [discrepancies] should there be when civilian lives are at risk?”

Army aviation engineer Scott Rosengren said the unit in charge of helicopters would seek an airworthiness recommendation and organise a safety working group.

Rosengren said that if he were “king for a day” he would replace the 1980s-era craft but that they met federal regulations. “The FAA provides the requirements for flying in the national airspace,” Rosengren said. “We do meet the specifications.”

Two military aviation veterans who now handle civilian helicopter flights in the region said in testimony and interview transcripts that they had raised alarms about close calls to military leadership through the helicopter workings group.

Rick Dressler, who works for MedStar, said “there was a significant, significant issue with both training and attitude towards operation within the DC airspace.”

Aaron Smith, chief helicopter pilot with the Prince George’s County police, recalled telling the head of the 12th Battalion several years ago, “You guys have no clue what we’re doing, and there’s going to be a catastrophic incident”. He told investigators: “It was predicted and it happened”.

The Army did not explain those warnings but said Brigadier-General Matthew Braman, until recently the head of Army aviation, asked Dressler to share the correspondence he mentioned.

There was little room between the top of the helicopter route and the landing path for National’s runway 33, according to the NTSB and a Washington Post review of aviation charts, with as little as 15ft (4.5m) separating the route for helicopters and a landing path for one of the runways at the airport.

In March, the safety board called that gap an “intolerable risk”. The FAA restricted helicopter traffic after the crash, and the route past the airport has now been permanently closed.

Members of a helicopter working group at the National control tower had pushed for changes to improve safety in the years before the crash, according to the NTSB investigation.

The proposal to move the route was designed to “deconflict” the routes with landing paths for runways at National. The Washington Post previously reported that controllers had unsuccessfully sought to shift the helicopter route to the east over Interstate 295.

Members of the working group told NTSB investigators that the proposal stopped at the regional general manager’s office, “who they specifically recalled stating something to the effect that it was ‘too political’ and that they were not going to forward it further”.

Clark Allen, who was the operations manager at the tower at the time of the crash, testified that a proposal to either eliminate the route or move it over the highway was raised in meetings with the agencies that use the airspace.

“Both of those options, we were told, we were unable to do due to continuity of government operations or security,” Allen said.

The working group in 2022 also proposed labelling an area near the crash site as a known “hot spot” on aviation charts.

That would have directed helicopter pilots to “use caution” for planes landing at National.

The idea was denied after being reviewed by a FAA office responsible for designing charts, according to the NTSB.