The U.S. government admitted Wednesday in a lengthy legal filing that the Federal Aviation Administration and the Army played a role in causing the tragic mid-air collision last January between an airliner and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter near Washington, D.C., killing 67 people.
The 209-page filing by the US Department of Justice, obtained by AFP, was part of the first civil lawsuit by one of the victims’ families, killed on the jet against the US government and the commercial airlines operating the plane.
"The United States admits that it owed a duty of care to Plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident," the document begins.
The official response said that the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated procedures about when to rely on pilots to maintain visual separation that night. Plus, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots’ “failure to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid” the airline jet makes the government liable.
But the filing suggested that others, including the pilots of the jet and the airlines, may have also played a role. The lawsuit also blamed American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, for their roles in the crash, but those airlines have filed motions to dismiss.
The filing also admitted to the failure of the US Army pilots of the Black Hawk
"to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid other aircraft and their failure was a cause-in-fact and proximate cause of the accident."
At least 28 bodies were recovered from the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the American Airlines regional jet while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, just across the river from the nation’s capital, officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
In July this year, the families of the victims of American Eagle Flight 5342 said they are deeply dismayed by Army’s recent testimony at the June 5th hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
A letter to the Secretary of the Army, signed by family members of the passengers who died when the regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter collided, had called out the Army’s refusal to engage with families, despite other parties involved in the accident being willing to cooperate.
Robert Clifford, one of the attorneys for the family of victim Casey Crafton said the government admitted “the Army’s responsibility for the needless loss of life” and the FAA’s failure to follow air traffic control procedures while “rightfully” acknowledging others –- American Airlines and PSA Airlines -– also contributed to the deaths.
The families of the victims “remain deeply saddened and anchored in the grief caused by this tragic loss of life,” he said.
The NTSB expects to release its report on the cause of the crash early next year, but investigators have already highlighted a number of factors that contributed, including the helicopter flying too high on a route that allowed only scant separation between planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway and helicopters passing below.
Just before the fatal collision, the controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance.
FAA has acknowledged during the NTSB’s investigative hearings that the controllers at Reagan had become overly reliant on the use of visual separation. That’s a practice the agency has since ended.
Witnesses told the NTSB that they have serious questions about how well the helicopter crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.
The Senate moved Wednesday afternoon to close a loophole that could allow military aircraft to fly without broadcasting their locations just like an Army helicopter was doing last January before it collided.
Just hours after passing a massive defense bill that included the worrisome provisions about military flights, the Senate approved a bipartisan bill that will require all aircraft use ADS-B technology, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast technology, to broadcast their locations.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said that “tragedy could have been avoided” if the Army Black Hawk had been using its ADS-B system to broadcast its location before the crash, and this bill should save lives.
To be noted here, on October 16, 2025, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chair of the Committee, made the announcement of the bipartisan agreement requiring aircraft operators to equip their fleets with ADS-B In technology by December 31, 2031.
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