A helicopter was forced to take evasive action to avoid colliding with a plane that was landing at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., during a July 2018 incident that mirrored the deadly midair collision that occurred Wednesday night.
The incident, first reported by CBS News, occurred when a trio of helicopters were traveling along a similar route as the Army Black Hawk helicopter involved in Wednesday’s collision. It’s unclear who those three helicopters were affiliated with.
In that 2018 incident, a Federal Aviation Administration technical center plane was on approach to Runway 33 when at least one of the helicopters had to take evasive action to avoid colliding with the FAA plane.
Runway 33 was the same runway that American Eagle Flight 5342 was supposed to land on before Wednesday’s deadly collision.
Similar to Wednesday’s fatal crash, in the 2018 incident only one air traffic controller was managing both local plane traffic and helicopter traffic, a role that is usually staffed by two people. A synopsis from an FAA aviation safety report of the incident stated that the air traffic controller in the tower had failed to issue traffic information to multiple flights on approach to the airport.
In scanner audio obtained by CBS News, the helicopter pilot can be heard telling the air traffic controller that it had to “divert to avoid that aircraft.”
The air traffic controller apologized for the near miss to both pilots.
“I should’ve been better with that traffic call. Sorry about that. I’m sorry for the confusion,” the controller said.
The crucial difference between the 2018 incident and this week’s collision that killed 67 people was that the 2018 incident occurred in the daytime, allowing for greater visuals from the helicopter to take evasive action and avoid the aircraft on approach.
The FAA did not respond to request for comment.
CBS News has identified at least five close calls between planes and helicopters around Reagan National in recent years.
The Black Hawk helicopter in Wednesday’s collision was on a training flight at the time. Lawmakers have raised questions about the safety of having military aircraft practice in the same airspace as commercial aircraft.
“I have not yet heard a good reason why military helicopters are doing training exercises in the same airspace as commercial airliners – at night with peak congestion,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote on X. “I hope these exercises in the Reagan airspace will be suspended indefinitely until the investigation is complete.”
Billy Nolan, who served as acting administrator of the FAA during the Biden administration, argues that military helicopters should be sharing the air space with commercial aircraft.
“What we should look at is say, have we missed anything in terms of how this is designed, how the roots of the are designed?” Nolan said. “And is there anything that we would, should or could do differently to prevent this from happening again.”
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