The family of one of the 67 people killed when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., sued Wednesday the government and the airlines involved, accusing them of failing to recognize the warning signs after more than 30 documented near misses in the area.
Other families are expected to join this first lawsuit that seeks to hold the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army, American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, accountable for the deadliest U.S. plane crash since 2001. PSA Airlines operated Flight 5342 that crashed Jan. 29.
The lawsuit says the airlines and government agencies “utterly failed in their responsibilities to the traveling public.”
The FAA didn’t immediately respond but the airlines and Army both said they are focused on supporting the families who lost loved ones in the crash and ensuring the safety of their flights. The Army declined to discuss the details of the lawsuit, but American and PSA defended their actions and said they will fight any claim that they caused or contributed to this accident.
“Flight 5342 was on a routine approach to DCA (Reagan airport) when the Army helicopter — that was above the published helicopter route altitude — collided with it,” the airlines said in their statement. “American has a strong track record of putting the safety of our customers and team members above everything else.”
The widow of Casey Crafton from Connecticut, who is raising three young boys without her husband, filed the lawsuit. Her lawyers also represent the majority of the families of people who died in the crash.
Crafton’s brother read a statement from his widowed sister-in-law, Rachael Crafton, during a news conference Wednesday, describing the family’s despair.
“Nearly eight months ago, our lives were shattered in a moment, and the grief has been unimaginable. The future we dreamed about was taken away from us,” Dailey Crafton said.
Determining the cause of the crash
The National Transportation Safety Board has already highlighted a long list of things that likely contributed to the crash, although the final report identifying the cause won’t be ready until next year.
The Black Hawk helicopter was flying well above the 200-foot (60-meter) limit, but even if it had been at the correct altitude, the route it was flying provided a scant 75 feet (23 meters) of separation between helicopters and planes landing on Ronald Reagan International Airport’s secondary runway. The flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually flying 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than the altimeter showed the pilots before the two aircraft collided.
The NTSB has also said the FAA failed to recognize an alarming pattern of near misses at the busy airport in the years before the crash and ignored concerns about helicopter traffic around the airport its own controllers raised years earlier. Investigators also said that overworked controllers were trying to squeeze as many planes as possible into the landing pattern with minimal separation on a regular basis. If any of those things — or a number of other factors — had been different that night, the collision might have been avoided.
The lawsuit says the airlines failed in their duty to protect the passengers because they were aware of numerous incidents in which helicopters flew close to commercial aircraft around Reagan airport but failed to adequately train pilots and didn’t inform them about the helicopter routes or take other action to mitigate the risks. Other airline policies, such as allowing pilots to accept an alternative runway that intersects with the helicopter route and heavily scheduling flights in the second half of every hour, may have contributed.
“There is clear evidence that there were dozens of near-misses and thousands of reports of congestion between commercial aircraft and military aircraft at Reagan National that were being ignored by the airlines,” said lawyer Bob Clifford, who is representing the families.
The lawsuit says the PSA pilots should have reacted sooner when they received an alert about traffic in the area 19 seconds before the crash instead of waiting until the last second to pull up. The lawsuit says a yellow icon appeared on the pilots’ warning system showing the relative direction and altitude of the Army helicopter.
The PSA pilots would also have heard controllers warn the helicopter about their aircraft although the controller never warned the PSA pilots directly.
Turning grief into action
Doug Lane lost his wife, Christine, and his son, Spencer — an aspiring Olympic figure skater — in the crash.
Addressing the news conference, Lane urged investigators to quickly determine what went wrong to prevent future accidents.
“We’ve also turned our grief into action,” Lane said of the victims’ families. “We collaborated with Congress on critical air safety reforms. We secured a much needed set of oversight investigations into the FAA, and we will not rest until similar investigations are underway into the U.S. Army.”
Among the jet’s passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston, who were returning from an elite junior skaters’ camp following the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. A figure skating tribute event in Washington raised $1.2 million for the crash victims’ families.
Others on the flight from Wichita included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas; four members of a steamfitters’ union in suburban Maryland; nine students and parents from schools in Fairfax County, Virginia; and two Chinese nationals. There were also four crew members on the plane and three people in the helicopter’s crew who were killed.
Bill and Renee Parente said they are hoping the lawsuit can answer the lingering questions about the crash that killed their 34-year-old son, Anthony Parente, less than six months before he was due to get married.
Bill Parente said his family is mad because this crash didn’t have to happen.
“We are on a mission to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bill Parente said after the news conference. “We have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman and Rick Gentilo in Washington, D.C., contributed.
