A new nine-second video, released by CBS News' '60 Minutes' program, offers a devastating perspective on the final moments of the collision between a commercial airplane and a military helicopter that occurred last year. The footage captures the precise moment when American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk collided in mid-air near Ronald Reagan National Airport, an incident that resulted in the total loss of both aircraft and their occupants. The images show the passenger jet attempting a desperate ascent maneuver just seconds before impact. According to reports, the day before the tragedy, on January 28, two extreme proximity incidents occurred between commercial flights and military aircraft in the same area. In both cases, collision alarms in the cockpits of civilian aircraft forced pilots to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid an imminent collision with Army helicopters flying at unauthorized altitudes. In January of this year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the accident resulted from systemic failures by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The agency determined that the lack of safeguards to separate helicopter traffic from passenger aircraft near Reagan National Airport created the conditions for the disaster. Jennifer Homendy, NTSB chair, called the event '100% preventable' and urged profound reforms in air traffic management. The release of this new visual angle intensified criticism towards the Army's safety culture and the FAA's omission of data, which for years had received warnings from air traffic controllers about the dangers of sharing the capital's airspace in that manner. Upon impact, both units burst into flames, falling over the U.S. capital's metropolitan area. This disaster, originally recorded on January 29, 2025, claimed the lives of 67 people: 64 individuals aboard the commercial plane and three soldiers who were part of the helicopter's crew. Alongside the audiovisual material, documents have emerged suggesting critical failures in the city's airspace security.
