A former Washington DC-area air traffic controller has spoken out about the ‘obvious cracks in the system’ that existed when an American Airlines plane and Black Hawk helicopter collided last year. The flight was traveling above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in DC on January 29, 2025 when it crashed into the Army Blackhawk helicopter in mid-air, killing all 67 passengers onboard the flight. But Emily Hanoka said she had seen problems at the congested airport long before her shift that night, which ended just a few hours before the fatal collision.
‘There were obvious cracks in the system, there were obvious holes,’ she told 60 Minutes’ Sharyn Alfonsi in an interview that aired Sunday night. ‘You had frontline controllers ringing that bell for years and years, saying, “This is not safe. This cannot continue. Please change this.” And that didn’t happen.’ In a report released earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that between 2021 to 2024, 85 near mid-air collisions between helicopters and commercial planes at the airport were reported to the FAA. 60 Minutes also obtained records that show that just one day before the fatal collision, two separate passenger jets had to take sudden action to avoid colliding with Army helicopters.
