BALTIMORE —Air traffic has become increasingly complex and congested in the Baltimore region and around other national flight hubs, raising questions about ways to boost safety a day after the deadly midair collision at Ronald Reagan National Airport.

Wednesday night’s crash plunged an American Airlines jet with 64 people and an Army helicopter with three soldiers into the Potomac River. No survivors have been found, and the cause of the crash is under investigation.

“The idea from all tragic situations is to learn from them and cause it to be safer over time,” said Robert W. Mann Jr., an airline industry analyst and former airline executive. Airline travel is in general, he said, “very, very safe.”

There’s a need for better coordination in airspace increasingly shared by civil and military operations, where demand may be increasing faster than the capacity to handle it, leading to more conflicts, more congestion and more delays, aviation experts said Thursday.

Reagan National finds itself in a unique position in the nation’s capital, close to military bases and the Pentagon.

The Army helicopter, on a training mission from Fort Belvoir in Virginia, was traveling a path known as Route 4 from Fort Washington over the Potomac River to the Wilson Bridge, heading south along the river and passing the airport.

Helicopters typically follow highways and rivers. Meanwhile, the jet was approaching the airport’s Runway 33.

“It is one of the few airports where you have this very dense and very complex air space shared by civil and military operations,” Mann said, drawing a comparison to San Diego International Airport with large military operations close by.

Reagan National is similar to several dozen airports in the U.S., including Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, in being designated “Class B” air space, a restriction that requires higher levels of experience from pilots and air crew because of a more complex nature of traffic.

Mann said there’s no getting around the need for military operations in and around Washington and nearby airports, which includes a need for night training. But it will be crucial to review certain policies and practices.

“The issue is whether they should be doing that on routes that conflict with arriving and departing civil traffic,” he said. “You’re going to have to do the training. You have to do it at night, and you have to use night goggles, but you don’t have to do it in close proximity to civil travel.”

He also questioned whether the Army’s Black Hawk helicopter remained below its limit of 200 feet above ground or lower, which will be part of the investigation.

Another expert said it appears the jet and the helicopter correctly followed proscribed flight paths and that radio communications between air traffic controllers and the Army aircraft followed protocol as well.

“And data to me it looks like a very normal operation that just didn’t work,” said Scott Graham, a former air traffic control investigator who retired from the National Transportation Safety Board in 2017 after 20 years.

Graham noted that air traffic recordings show a controller alerting the helicopter pilot twice about the plane approaching the runway and each time getting a response that the pilot was aware.

When relying on “vision separation,” a pilot needs to acknowledge traffic and make adjustments, he said, and it’s unclear why that didn’t happen. It’s possible, Graham speculated, that the pilot may have seen another aircraft headed to a different runway.

“Maybe you’re looking at the wrong airplane,” he said. “That could be the confusion … And at night, it’s more difficult.”

Graham pointed out that the jet and the helicopter would not have been in contact and typically do not communicate on the same radio frequencies.

“They don’t talk to each other, and they don’t need to,” because air traffic controllers communicate with each aircraft and with each other, he said.

That particular recording does not include any traffic calls that may have been made to the jet.

Graham said it would be typical to have fewer controllers working shifts at night with less traffic, Graham said.

Graham said he listened carefully to the controller on duty.

“Listening to this guy, I don’t think he’s overwhelmed,” he said.

But officials on Thursday said that control tower staffing was “not normal” at the time of the aviation disaster, the worst in a generation, the Associated Press reported.

It cited a report obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration that said one air traffic controller was doing work normally assigned to two people when the collision happened.

At least 28 bodies had been recovered from the river as of late Thursday.

©2025 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.