Multi-aircraft Event — PSA Airlines 5342 / US Army PAT25

Investigation Summary

The NTSB adopted final report AIR-26/02 on 27 January 2026, with 74 findings and 50 safety recommendations, 33 to the FAA and 8 to the Army. The probable cause is the FAA's design and placement of a helicopter route in close proximity to a runway approach path, its failure to regularly review and evaluate helicopter routes and the data available to it, its failure to act on recommendations to mitigate mid-air collision risk at DCA, and the system's overreliance on visual separation given the known limitations of the see-and-avoid concept. Contributing factors were the Army's lack of a robust safety management system, the helicopter crew's unawareness of the limitations of their altimetry - the aircraft was at 278 ft radio altitude against a 200 ft route ceiling, with a 300/400 ft discrepancy between indications - the limitations of collision-avoidance technology, and capacity strain at DCA. The Board attributed systemic failures to the FAA and to the Army, not to the controller alone. Runway 33 was offered and accepted at 20:43:06; a traffic advisory to PAT25 was issued at 20:46:02 and another at 20:47:40, nineteen seconds before impact. Part of a controller transmission - "pass behind the" - was stepped on by a 0.8-second microphone key on the helicopter, and the word "circling" is not audible on the helicopter CVR; the crew were on a night-vision-goggle standardisation evaluation flight and most likely misperceived which aircraft they were watching. On the CRJ, elevators were near maximum nose-up one second before impact. The airplane's lack of ADS-B In alerting was emphasised over any ADS-B Out question: an alert would have been available about 59 seconds before the collision, and a TCAS resolution advisory was altitude-inhibited at that height in any case. The Board's urgent recommendations of March 2025 (AIR-25/01) called for helicopter operations on Route 4 between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge to be prohibited while runways 15 and 33 at DCA are in use and for an alternative route to be designated, and disclosed 15,214 close-proximity events between October 2021 and December 2024 and roughly one TCAS resolution advisory a month between 2011 and 2024. The final report went on to treat the splitting of helicopter and airplane traffic across separate tower frequencies as a hazard, recommending that a common-frequency requirement be evaluated.

Final Conclusions

Photographic Evidence (1)

Video Analysis

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Crew Experience

Systems & Failure Modes

Interesting Facts

• 01The Black Hawk's serial was 00-26860.
• 02The NTSB attributed systemic failures to both the FAA and the U.S. Army; 33 of the 50 recommendations went to the FAA and 8 to the Army.
• 03The helicopter was at 278 ft radio altitude against a 200 ft route ceiling, with a 300/400 ft discrepancy between altitude indications.
• 04Part of a controller transmission, "pass behind the", was stepped on by a 0.8-second microphone key; the word "circling" is not audible on the helicopter CVR.
• 05The helicopter crew were on a night-vision-goggle standardisation evaluation flight and most likely misperceived which aircraft they were watching.
• 06ADS-B In alerting, which the airplane did not have, would have alerted about 59 seconds before the collision; a TCAS resolution advisory was altitude-inhibited at that height.
• 07The CRJ's elevators were near maximum nose-up one second before impact.
• 08The March 2025 urgent recommendations disclosed 15,214 close-proximity events between October 2021 and December 2024 and about one TCAS resolution advisory a month from 2011 to 2024.

Safety Actions & Advisories

Location

ACCIDENT SITE · Coordinates taken from the wikidata coordinate.