(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump criticized air traffic controllers for not properly directing the military Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines passenger jet carrying 64 passengers and crew.
Trump questioned the air traffic control tower in a Truth Social post, asking why it did not tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if the pilot saw the plane. “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented,” Trump wrote. “NOT GOOD!!!”
In a news conference Thursday, Trump said, “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas.” Trump said his administration would ensure “nothing like this happens again.”
Trump told reporters that the angle of the helicopter was “unbelievably bad” when the air traffic controller began telling the pilot what to do. Trump also cast blame on the helicopter pilot, claiming the pilot did the opposite of what he was told.
“For some reason, there weren’t adjustments made,” Trump said.
The role of air traffic control
According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, air traffic controllers ensure the safety of about 2 million passengers per day and about 1 billion per year. The industry’s workforce includes about 4,000 trained employees.
Tower controllers are based in glass towers at the nation’s airports and manage air traffic at a range of 3 to 30 miles around the airport. Tower controllers provide pilots with taxiing and takeoff instructions, air traffic clearance and other instructions based on their observations and experience, the association said on its website.
The controllers are tasked with providing separation between landing and department aircraft and transferring control of aircraft to the en-route center controllers.
Employees at terminal radar approach control facilities work in radar rooms that are located in the airport towers, the association said. These workers are also responsible for the safe separation of departing aircraft, landing and aircraft maneuvering in the airport environment.
NewsNation reached out to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association for comment Thursday, but an email was not immediately returned.
Trump’s executive order on hiring freezes
Almost immediately after taking office, Trump signed an executive order that sparked the freezing of federal civilian employees into positions that were currently open.
The order stated that the freeze affects all executive departments and agencies regardless of their sources of operational or programmatic funding. A day later, the White House said that hiring within the Federal Aviation Administration had betrayed the agency’s mission “by elevating dangerous discrimination over excellence.”
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure issued a statement after, saying Trump had frozen the hiring of air traffic controllers along with other safety-critical positions.
In the statement, the committee, led by its ranking member, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said that the bipartisan FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 directed the administration to hire the maximum number of air traffic controllers. He said that Trump’s hiring freeze put air travelers at risk.
“Hiring air traffic controllers is the number one safety issue according to the entire aviation industry,” Larsen said in the statement. “Instead of working to improve aviation safety and lower costs for hardworking American families, the (Trump) Administration is choosing to spread bogus DEI claims to justify this decision.
“I’m not surprised by the President’s dangerous and divisive actions, but the Administration must reverse course. Let’s get back to aviation safety and allow the FAA to do its job protecting the flying public.”
Trump said Thursday that his executive order restored the “very highest standards” of air traffic standards.
“We have to have our smartest people,” Trump told reporters. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. It matters intellect, talent. They have to be naturally talented geniuses.”
Air traffic control job shortages
In 2023, then Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told NewsNation that one of the biggest issues facing the aviation industry was a lack of air traffic controllers.
“We do see a concern in terms of the availability of enough air traffic control staffers, that you have backups if somebody calls in sick or if there’s a lot of pressure on a particular region or tower. And in some areas, we’re not at the staffing levels that I want us to see,” Buttigieg said in the interview.
On Thursday, Buttigieg criticized Trump’s response to the crash, writing on X “Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.
He continued: “President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
In the 2023, interview, the former transportation secretary told NewsNation that he hoped to see more air traffic controllers in place.
“I’d like to see us have about 3,000 more (air traffic control) than we have right now,” Buttigieg said in 2023. “Just to be clear, that doesn’t mean there are empty seats in a tower. But, what it does mean is you don’t have the kind of buffer, the kind of redundancy, that you want to.”
Did the airport’s location matter?
Because of the airport’s proximity to the White House and U.S. Capitol, the amount of restricted airspace around Reagan International Airport is much higher than in other cities, the BBC reported.
Aviation consultant Phillip Butterworth-Hayes told the BBC that air traffic involving both commercial airliners and military aircraft makes managing the air space more complex. Butterworth-Hayes called the area “the most secure” airspace in the world and said that it should be the safest considering the number of security and civilian safety organizations working there, the BBC reported.
“You are at the border of three or four aviation systems here,” he said. “And it’s at those borders where most accidents tend to happen.”
What air traffic controllers saw
According to audio recordings of air traffic control conversations that took place, one air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the passenger jet in its sight less than 30 seconds before the collision took place. American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told reporters Thursday that the helicopter pilot was at fault, asking why the aircraft had come into the path of the jet.
Moments after air traffic control asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight, it instructed the helicopter to “pass behind” the jet,” The Associated Press reported. Air traffic control had directed the pilot of the American Airlines flight to “take runway 33” at Reagan Airport.
According to reports, no response was heard from the helicopter on the ATC audio, but the pilot’s response was heard on a different frequency that is designed for helicopters.
The audio also picks up an air traffic controller saying, “Crash, crash, crash. This is an alert three. Crash, crash, crash.”
From there, air traffic controllers began diverting other air traffic away from the area.
Audio picks up air traffic controllers saying that the collision took place over the Potomac River as the plane was approaching its assigned runway. One air traffic controller said that all runways were closed and that no planes were moving.
“I just saw a fireball, and then it was just gone,” audio picks up one air traffic controller saying. “I haven’t seen anything since they hit the river. But it was a CRJ and a helicopter that hit, I would say about a half-mile off the approach into 33.”.