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Behind the scenes look at the NTSB
One year ago this month, the deadly mid-air crash over the Potomac involving an American Airlines jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter sent shockwaves across the world. The deadly plane crash at Reagan Airport took the lives of 67 people in January 2025. On Tuesday, FOX 5 got a behind-the-scenes look at how the NTSB is making skies safer in the aftermath.
WASHINGTON - One year ago this month, the deadly mid-air crash over the Potomac involving an American Airlines jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter sent shockwaves across the world.
The deadly plane crash at Reagan Airport took the lives of 67 people in January 2025.
On Tuesday, FOX 5 got a behind-the-scenes look at how the NTSB is making skies safer in the aftermath.
An inside look:
FOX 5 got direct access to engineers, scientists, labs and more, showing how the NTSB works, taking tragedy and turning it into lessons learned and lives saved.
One of the big takeaways was seeing actual black boxes and learning more about how the NTSB investigators restore and repair the memory cards in black boxes in the aftermath of accidents.
The memory pucks in black boxes are similar to cards in cameras and phones.
Dig deeper:
The behind-the-scenes tour included the agency’s recorders and materials laboratories ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly DCA mid-air collision and ahead of the agency’s upcoming board meeting on the crash.
"In the recorder's lab, you’ll be able to see how we take iPhones and iPads that may be submerged in water for a long time we extract data from them. We actually get requests from throughout the United States, throughout the world," NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.
Why are we doing this? Because the NTSB core value is transparency," Homendy went on to say. "You can see what we do."
"In terms of what’s the most important evidence, that’s a very broad question. There’s so many factors for an accident hit within the first days, weeks and months, we may not know what’s critical… human factor-based type of accident," Michael Budinsky, Acting Director, NTSB Research and Engineering Department
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy says the work that’s happening behind the scenes here is leading to safer trains, cars and planes.
The black boxes we saw today did *not include the black box from the DCA mid-air collision, nor was the DCA collision the focus of today’s tour.
Even so, it will be top of the agenda at the NTSB’s upcoming board meeting.
The backstory:
On Jan. 29, American Airlines Flight 5342 was preparing to touchdown at Ronald Reagan National Airport when air traffic controllers asked pilots if they could land the jet on a shorter runway a few minutes before landing, and they said they were able.
Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight-tracking sites showed the plane adjusting its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the Black Hawk if it had the arriving plane in sight.
The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later, telling them, "PAT 25, pass behind the CRJ." Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.
The wreckage tumbled into the icy Potomac River, and all 67 people on board — 60 passengers and four crew members on the American Eagle jetliner, and three people on board the military helicopter — were killed in the crash.
It marked the deadliest U.S. air disaster in almost 25 years.