Military helicopter flights forced at least two planes to abort landings at Reagan National Airport in the week before a deadly collision presumably killed 67 people on Wednesday, according to a report.
On Tuesday night, just one day before the collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, a different plane alerted the air traffic control tower that it had to abort its landing to avoid collision with a helicopter, the Washington Post reported.
Yet another plane arriving at DCA from Charlotte scrubbed its landing on Jan. 23, again because of a helicopter.
“They had to circle back around because there was a helicopter in the flight path,” said RIchard Hart, a passenger on the Jan. 23 flight who spoke to the Washington Post. “At the time I found it odd. … Now I find it disturbingly tragic.”
LIVE UPDATES: DC PLANE CRASH INVESTIGATORS RECOVER AMERICAN AIRLINES BLACK BOXES AFTER MIDAIR COLLISION
Crew retrieve wreckage of American Airlines flight 5342 on the Potomac River, Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30, 2025. The plane was involved in a fatal collision with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter the previous night. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
The two close calls came within a week of Wednesday’s horrifying collision, in which an inbound commercial flight from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River. A total of 64 people, including four crew members, were aboard passenger American Airlines Flight 5342, and three soldiers were on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. All are presumed dead.
