FAA restricts helicopter flights near Washington airport after deadly crash

(Reuters) — The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday indefinitely restricted helicopter flights near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, two days after a midair collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter killed 67 people.

The FAA took the action to reduce the risk of another collision as crews worked to pull the wreckage of America’s deadliest air disaster in two decades from the Potomac River.

An FAA official told Reuters the agency was barring most helicopters from parts of two routes near the airport and only allowing police and medical helicopters in the area between the airport and nearby bridges, pending a complete evaluation. It was not clear how long those restrictions would last.

The crash has cast a harsh spotlight on questions about air safety and a shortage of tower controllers at the heavily congested airport that serves the U.S. capital.

Airspace is crowded around the Washington area, home to three commercial airports, multiple military bases and some senior government officials who are ferried around by helicopter. Over a three-year period ending in 2019, there were 88,000 helicopter flights within 30 miles of Reagan National Airport, including about 33,000 military and 18,000 law enforcement flights, the Government Accountability Office said in a 2021 report.

The American Airlines plane was trying to land at Reagan National Airport when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday evening.

Authorities have not pinpointed a reason for the collision.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it aims to recover the helicopter’s black box, which captures flight data and voices in the cockpit, on Friday.

The FAA is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets. The agency said in 2023 that it had 10,700 certified controllers, about the same as a year earlier.

One controller rather than two was handling local plane and helicopter traffic on Wednesday at the airport, a situation deemed “not normal” but considered adequate for lower volumes of traffic, according to a person briefed on the matter.