Concerns Raised by Former Air Traffic Controller After Fatal Collision
A former air traffic controller in Washington, D.C., who was on duty during the January 2025 mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. military helicopter, warned that there were already clear “holes” in the air traffic system before the crash.
“All the warning signs were there,” Emily Hanoka stated during a CBS 60 Minutes interview. Controllers had highlighted safety issues, yet officials allowed continued operations even though Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was operating beyond its limit.
“Front line controllers have been ringing the bell for years that this is not safe,” she emphasized.
Hanoka pleaded for change, stating, “We can’t keep doing this. Please change this so it never happened.”
She had finished her shift a few hours before the tragic event that claimed 67 lives. Despite numerous safety recommendations, little action was taken. “Controllers created a regional safety council, and whenever a safety report was filed, data was collected to back it up. Yet, many recommendations didn’t progress far,” she explained.
Controllers struggled to manage the airport’s operations, where 800 flights were scheduled daily from a single runway. “Sometimes, the airport is overloaded beyond its capacity,” she mentioned. “There was definitely pressure. If we didn’t move the planes, traffic jams would occur.”
To cope, air traffic controllers had to implement squeeze plays—carefully timed takeoffs and landings on a single runway. Hanoka noted, “For this airspace to function, this had to happen. And it worked—until it didn’t.”
Interestingly, just a day prior to the disaster, two near-miss incidents were reported, including one involving an American Airlines flight from Norfolk. Over the span of three years, between 2021 and 2024, there were 85 instances of near-air collisions.
In the aftermath of the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has launched a comprehensive safety review and discontinued the practice known as visual separation, which relied on pilots seeing and avoiding each other in flight.
Controllers must now depend on radar to keep planes safely apart. “The Potomac River tragedy revealed a startling truth: for years, warning signs had gone unnoticed, and the FAA was in dire need of reform,” commented Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.
This shift follows a National Transportation Safety Board report that pointed out an “overreliance on visual separation.” Additionally, restrictions have been placed on non-essential helicopter flights around Reagan Airport.
