[VIDEO]

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, delivered the below opening statement at a hearing about the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) final report on the January 29, 2025, mid-air collision near DCA Airport that took the lives of 67 people. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy testified before the Committee about the findings the report contained.

Sen. Cantwell: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and this is a very important hearing this morning. I feel like it's almost a culmination of years to finally get a report so crisp and clear about the failures of the FAA and what it needs to do to change its culture.

“I too, want to remind and remember the individuals here about the Colgan Air crash. Our heart still goes out to the families affected by that incident, including people from Seattle. I also want to say that the Colgan families have been a constant presence in this room. And while that is not the way the political system is supposed to work, where the victims have to come and be the biggest advocates for safety, that is certainly what the Colgan Air families have done. So, we certainly remember them today.

“And I want to also just say, Mr. Chairman, that yesterday's incident at El Paso reminds me of why this interagency coordination is so important. If we can get into this kind of conflict where the FAA is saying that we're going to shut down airspace for 10 days, and then another agency is saying something different, and there's concern about what is happening in the airspace, it just seems to me that we have a real problem of coordination between DOD and FAA. So, we need to resolve that. I hope that your calls for an interagency briefing will be heeded and that we will get to the bottom of this. Not one more day needs to go by without that kind of information and oversight for the public.

“But we are here today to thank Chair Homendy and the NTSB, and to thank them for their recommendations and findings after a thorough, long investigation into the tragic crash at DCA last year. The loss of 67 souls when an Army helicopter collided with American Airlines [Flight] 5342 has weighed heavily on many of us, but certainly the families who are most affected. Our hearts go out to you.

“Many of the family members are here today, and I know they will be following today's discussion very closely. You have stood with us to make our aviation system safer, including your support for the ROTOR Act, which was critical in trying to push this legislation through the United States Senate and hopefully to get it to the President's desk.

“I want to thank Chair Homendy again for her work with her team -- tirelessly delivering answers to these families. I know that you deliver a lot of answers and information to us. I think no one knows how hard that is in delivering the information to the families. I know from our own air accidents with the seaplane in Seattle, how trying to find the victims of that crash -- there's just so much work that goes into communicating with the families, and so we thank you for that as well.

“These answers demonstrate that this tragedy was a result of many systematic failures, and that [they] failed everyone on Flight 5342 and the Army helicopter and the air traffic controllers. And so this is part of a larger trend where we have to be the ones that put a stop to this, finally. We have witnessed multiple near misses between commercial airline flights and military flights, including a helicopter flying too close to D.C. air traffic last May, exposing communication failures between the Pentagon air traffic control tower and the D.C. Tower, and a near mid-air collision between an Air Force tanker and JetBlue [plane] flying from Curacao back to the United States. These incidents are just unacceptable, so we look forward to the 14 [key] recommendations that you are making today, especially the issue of NTSB and the larger FAA reforms.

“I am concerned that the NTSB found that the FAA and Army are dangerously over-reliant on pilots to ‘see and avoid.’ How can a congested airspace rely on ‘see and avoid’ other traffic around the National Capital Region? The NTSB found these practices created an unacceptable risk, especially without the help of a key safety technology that we've already implemented in so many other aspects of our airspace -- ADS-B In and ADS-B Out. NTSB has also emphasized having TCAS [Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System] is not enough, not enough. The CRJ pilots did not get air traffic alerts at lower altitudes, below 900 feet. And pilot alerts are more limited if ADS-B In data is not feeding into the system.

“Last week, the NTSB issued their 18th recommendation in 20 years on this type of technology, ADS-B In and Out, that basically is the alert system that we expected in the digital age to be implemented 20 years ago. So recommending that all aircraft are required to fly in a controlled airspace with this to ensure pilots have real-time awareness and traffic alerts, both in the air and on the ground, is just the last piece of an aviation safety system safeguard that has been recommended for years. And the question is, why hasn't someone been doing it? Money cannot be the answer, because the cost of lives has been too great.

“The bipartisan ROTOR Act also is key in the NTSB recommendations, and it will help to save and strengthen oversight. NTSB reinforced that the FAA and Army had access to safety data in years leading up to the crash that warned of heightened risk of mid-air collisions in D.C., but the FAA failed to act on that, as did the Army. So NTSB’s investigation of the DCA collision and the Alaska Airlines door plug accident showed that the FAA’s Safety Management System has been superficial at best.

“While the FAA has mandated SMS, a Safety Management System, which means when you have a safety problem, you have to stop and fix it. That's all that Safety Management System means. It means you have to stop and fix it. It means don't keep going on production. Don't keep going on your system until you fix the safety risk. But if you don't have a real SMS, then it really doesn't stop to fix the safety concerns.

“That is why the legislation we passed this morning is a start. We will hear from experts about why the FAA needs to do this, similar to the expert witnesses that provided us so much information about the MAX crashes. With the Committee's vote on this [SMS bill] today, I think we are one step closer. And we certainly know that controllers who voiced safety concerns about helicopter routes and stressful controller workloads were also ignored by FAA managers. So, we have to fix this as well.

“Mr. Chairman, I stand ready to work with you on getting the ROTOR Act onto the President's desk. This is critical legislation that will help now, and we also have more work to do, because this sequence of events and the events at El Paso show us that we have real communication issues, and we must do our oversight role.

“So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to Chair Homendy's important testimony this morning. Thank you.”

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