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A former air traffic controller from Washington D.C., who was on duty the night of the tragic mid-air collision in January 2025 between an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter, has spoken out about the glaring deficiencies in the system at the time of the incident.
“The warning signs were evident,” Emily Hanoka shared in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday. She detailed how air traffic controllers had previously raised safety concerns and were under pressure to keep operations running at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, despite the capacity being stretched to its limits.
“Frontline controllers had been sounding the alarm for years, expressing that the situation was unsafe,” she emphasized.
“This cannot go on. We pleaded for changes, yet nothing was done,” she continued.
Hanoka, who ended her shift just hours before the collision over the Potomac River that claimed 67 lives, noted that while safety recommendations were made, they were never fully implemented.
“Controllers formed local safety councils and every time that a controller made these safety reports, another controller was compiling data to back up the recommendation. And many recommendations were made, and they never went too far,” she said.
Air traffic controllers were tasked with keeping the airport moving – even though 800 flights a day would take off from its main runway.
“Some hours are overloaded, to the point where it’s over the capacity that the airport can handle,” she said.
“There was definitely a pressure. If you do not move planes, you will gridlock the airport.”
Controllers were forced to rely on a squeeze play – a highly-precise operation where planes take off and land within seconds of each other on just one runway.
“This is what has to happen, in order to make this airspace work. And it did work. It worked until it didn’t,” Hanoka said.
“There were obvious cracks in the system, there were obvious holes.”
The American Airlines plane was approaching the airport’s runway 33 when it collided with the Black Hawk helicopter, which was traveling south, over the icy river.
Commercial and military aircraft often criss-crossed at low altitudes over the river, with former pilots describing it as “helicopter alley.”
Just one day before the air disaster, two near misses were reported, CBS reported. One of those involved an American Airlines plane that left Norfolk. Between 2021 and 2024, 85 near mid-air collisions were reported.
Since the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration has rolled out a major safety overhaul, eliminating the practice known as visual separation.
This was where pilots were expected to see and avoid each other in the skies.
Air traffic controllers are now required to use radar to ensure aircraft remains separated.
“The tragedy over the Potomac one year ago revealed a startling truth: years of warning signs were missed, and the FAA needed dire reform,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
The FAA’s move came after the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in its report that there was an “overreliance of visual separation.”
Officials also imposed restrictions on non-essential helicopter flights operating around Reagan airport.