Reaping the Whirlwind | Inside the Potomac River Midair Collision

195 min read4 days ago--How America’s Golden Age of Aviation Safety Came To an EndIt was a clear and mild evening in America’s capital, warm enough to melt the concreted banks of nearly month-old snow and send the last frigid fragments of ice fleeing down the dark waters of the Potomac. Above the black expanse of the river, aircraft approaching Washington National Airport were strung across the sky like a chain of Christmas lights, lining up for the last big push before traffic trailed off into the night. The clock read 8:47 p.m.By January 2025, it had been nearly 16 years since the last time a major disaster befell a US airline. Countless aviation professionals had begun, developed, and even ended their careers without ever seeing one. On an intellectual level, all understood the statistical certainty that that record would one day end, and that the time and place of its ending, whether it be today or 10 years from now, in New York or Alaska, could not be predicted. And when it finally did happen, at 8:47 p.m. on the 29th of January 2025, at a height of 278 feet above the Potomac River in Washington D.C., it was difficult to comprehend that that day had in fact been today, and that an unprecedented period of safety had suddenly been consigned to the past. But for many who flew or worked in that hectic, benighted airspace, the fact that it ended at National Airport was not a surprise: their sentiment tinged by hindsight, they collectively said, “If it had to be anywhere, it would have been DCA.”How could it be that such a tragedy retroactively struck so many as inevitable? The fact is that some people did see it, or something like it, coming from a long way off. And the story of how it was nevertheless allowed to happen is one that spans decades, disciplines, and institutions, from the cockpits of the two downed aircraft to the halls of Congress itself. It was born out of a web of interlocking interests and policies that formed a seemingly intractable milieu of dysfunction, in which those who had the whole picture lacked the power to change it, and those who did have the power to effect change did not see the whole picture.Now, lubricated by the shock of disaster, the gears of bureaucracy have begun to turn, advancing safety improvements that will help make American airspace safer. But even as I write this, the same forces that created the conditions for that disaster remain at work, steadily pushing us into the jaws of the next one.◊◊◊________________________________________________________________[Download this article as a PDF][Download this article as an e-Book]Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Last Ten MinutesChapter 2: America’s (Least?) Favorite AirportChapter 3: Helicopters AmokChapter 4: Making it WorkChapter 5: The Rot in the MachineChapter 6: Damned Lies and StatisticsChapter 7: The Flight of PAT 25Chapter 8: Systems Theory and the Blame GameChapter 9: Breaking the Wheel_________________________________________________________________This article uses in-line citations for all claims other than basic, general information and the author’s personal opinions. Citations use the format [1] for a source containing few or no pages; [1:243–244] to identify the relevant page or page range in a source containing many pages; and [1–7:53:30] for time-stamped citations from the recordings of the NTSB hearings. The citations correspond to the bibliography linked at the end of the article.No AI tools were used to research, format, or write any part of this article.This article was reviewed for factual accuracy by an air traffic controller, a US Army UH-60 pilot, and an FAA expert prior to publication. However, if you spot an error, please let me know by private message or email._________________________________________________________________◊◊◊Chapter 1: The Last Ten MinutesThe flight from Wichita to Washington had been uneventful thus far for 34-year-old Captain Jonathan Campos and his first officer, 28-year-old Sam Lilley. The route was a relatively new one, inaugurated just a year earlier at the behest of Senator Jerry Moran and local officials in Wichita, who wanted to connect Washington, D.C. to the most populous city in Kansas, the city that billed itself as “The Air Capital of the World,” home to Cessna, Beechcraft, and Spirit Aerosystems.[2] The crew had begun their day there, at Wichita’s Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, fresh off a 20-hour rest break between the second and third days of a four-day trip sequence that had already taken them to Charlotte, North Carolina and Lafayette, Louisiana.[1:10] Such was the life of a regional airline pilot in America — hotels in second and third tier cities, fast food at small airports, cramped jets with two-by-two seating.Captain Campos had worked since 2019 for PSA Airlines, a wholly-owned regional subsidiary of American Airlines, where he had begun his airline career on the Canadair Regional Jet, or CRJ, a twin rear-engine jet designed and built in Canada by Bombardier, both independently and later under contract for Mitsubishi. PSA operates a single-type fleet of 140 CRJs, consisting of both 65-passenger CRJ-700s and 76-passenger CRJ-900s, all of which bear American Airlines livery and fly under the brand name American Eagle. Most passengers probably pay no attention to the fine print on both their tickets and the aircraft itself, which is required by law to state “Operated by PSA Airlines.”In more than five years with PSA, about half of them as captain, Campos had accumulated just shy of 4,000 flying hours, with three quarters of them on the CRJ series. First Officer Lilley had joined the company later, in 2022, and had just short of 2,500 hours, with 965 on the type. Both pilots were still near the beginning of their respective careers, and both were known for their passion, skill, and professionalism,[1:9–11] all hallmarks of a pair who were likely to keep climbing up the ladder into the major airlines, the common aspiration of most young aviators starting out at what they call “the regionals.”Neither pilot would have perceived anything unusual about the evening flight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on January 29, 2025. Captain Campos had flown there 39 times before; Lilley, 43 times.[1:10–11] They would have known the common approaches by name, recognized the navigational landmarks, and understood the airport’s frenetic pace of operations.Press enter or click to view image in full sizeN709PS, the CRJ-700 involved in the accident, seen here in better times. Photo by Jake Oesterreich.◊◊◊Descending through the mid-level airspace around Washington, the Potomac TRACON slotted them into the queue for the active approach to National Airport, the Mount Vernon visual approach to runway 1, proceeding up the Potomac River from the south. The TRACON swung them far to the south over Virginia, then turned them back around for a long, straight final, handing them over to the Washington tower at 20:43 local time.Though night had long since fallen over the nation’s capital, visibility was almost unlimited, and the pilots would have seen a long chain of airplanes stretching out ahead of them, descending on an invisible three-degree slope toward the distant lights of the runway. Over the pilots’ headsets, the tower frequency hummed with activity as the Local controller brought them in, landing an aircraft every minute, with departures squeezed in between.Using their PSA callsign and flight number, First Officer Lilley opened communication with a routine position report. “Tower, Bluestreak 5342 on Mount Vernon visual runway one.”“Bluestreak 5342, Washington tower, winds are three two zero at one seven, gusts two five,” the controller replied. “Can you take runway three three?”[1:361]Although most aircraft land on National Airport’s primary runway, designated 1 or 19 depending on the direction of use, the field has two other shorter runways, designated 15/33 and 4/22, respectively, which cross both runway 1/19 and each other to form a rough triangle. These auxiliary runways are too short to regularly accommodate larger airplanes, but PSA’s smaller CRJs could usually handle them, and Campos and Lilley were well aware that Washington tower liked to divert these regional jets to 15/33 when traffic was heavy in order to free up space on 1/19. At many regional airlines operating into National Airport, it had become standard practice to calculate performance figures for landing on runway 15/33 ahead of time, even if initially cleared to land on 1/19, so that the pilots could quickly accept or decline an offer to switch.[4–3:10:00–3:14:00]The pilot has final authority over whether to accept an offer to land on runway 15/33, even if they know the airplane is capable of doing so. Some pilots preferred not to land on that runway if they could help it, including the PSA flight in line ahead of flight 5342, whose curt reply to an identical offer, “unable tonight,” was captured on the air traffic control tower tapes.[1:360] But most were aware that accepting the approach made the controllers’ lives easier.Upon hearing the request, Captain Campos simply asked, “Do we got the numbers for it,” referring to the landing performance figures.Having already performed the calculations ahead of time, First officer Lilley replied, “Yeah, I think so,” then, perhaps double checking his work, added, “Yeah, it’s uh, it’s the same numbers.”[1:361]Campos was reluctant to accept. Runway 33 would impose a higher workload because it was a circling approach, requiring them to break off the glide path to runway 1, disconnect the autopilot and begin manual flight, circle with reference to landmarks, and align visually with the runway just before touchdown, all while maintaining the approach reference speed and the optimal glide path, listening to air traffic control communications, and watching for traffic.[1:152–153] It probably wasn’t the way Campos wanted to spend the last ten minutes of the