Crowded airspace can be a problem at Reagan National Airport

The Crash of a Helicopter and a Jet at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport: A Public Air Traffic Scenario for the First American Airlines Flight

There was a helicopter and a commercial plane in the air at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night.

The PSA Airlines jet was attempting to land at a nearby airport just before the accident happened.

A small aircraft, likely a helicopter, collided with a passenger jet at a low altitude, and there was a bright explosion while the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts website was live. The passenger jet is believed to have fallen into the river.

The plane, operating as flight 5342 for American Airlines, had left Kansas and was heading towards the DC area.

The airspace around DCA is complicated by the challenge of approaches into the airport and flight restrictions above government buildings. It’s particularly busy airspace too with an influx of police and military helicopters operating in the area.

The last major commercial airplane accident in the United States occurred in 2009, when a Colgan Air flight crashed near Buffalo killing a total of 50 people (49 passengers and crew, and one person inside a house).

John Cox, a retired pilot and safety consultant, said aircraft coming close to one another is a global problem and there are efforts to prevent it from happening in the future.

“Those of us who represent the region have often tried to make the case that, listen, we’ve got a couple of other airports here…Let’s spread the traffic out among the airports because this congestion issue has been a concern,” Kaine told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, adding that he was also concerned about whether there were enough air traffic controllers.

The re-authorization of the FAA last year included a plan to add flights to the airport despite opposition from some lawmakers in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C.

American Airlines flew more than 13 million passengers out of Reagan National Airport. American Airlines handles half of the commercial passenger traffic at the airport.

The airport had more than 2 million visitors in its first year. President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill in 1998 that renamed the airport after the 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose the airport’s location in 1938 after Congress debated the need for it, but failed to take action. Washington National Airport first opened for flights on June 16, 1941, with American Airlines winning a contest on which airline would land there first.

The airport has 58 gates and its designator name among airlines is DCA. It originally had four runways and today has three — including runway 33, where the American Airlines flight was set to land.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is located in Arlington, Va., across the river from the capital. The airport spans 860 acres, including 733 acres of land and 127 acres underwater, according to the airport.

There were more than 23,000 flight operations out of DCA each month in 2024, according to airport authorities — an average of 812 per day. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority says that there were more than 24 million passengers at the airport between January and November in 2024.

Search for Black Hawk Objects near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after the First Collision of an American Airlines Flight with a Black Hawk Helicopter

Search and recovery efforts are underway at the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – where an American Airlines flight collided midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday night.