An American Airlines level takes disconnected from Reagan National Airport successful beforehand of wreckage from a clang involving an American Eagle level and chopper implicit the Potomac stream successful Alexandria, Virginia, connected January 29, 2025.
Allison Robert | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The household of 1 of the victims of the January 29 fatal collision betwixt an American Airlines, opens caller tab determination pitchy and a U.S. Army chopper that killed 67 radical adjacent Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport sued the airline, its subsidiary and the U.S. authorities connected Wednesday.
The suit filed successful U.S. District Court successful Washington besides names PSA Airlines, which was operating the flight, and said the airlines "manipulated and abused" the accomplishment complaint strategy astatine the Washington airdrome "to unit successful much of their arrivals per hr astatine the airdrome contempt its cognition that doing truthful severely constricted the margins for safety."
The crash, which occurred conscionable southeast of the airdrome implicit the Potomac River, was the deadliest U.S. aerial catastrophe successful much than 20 years.
The suit said the airlines on with the Army and Federal Aviation Administration failed to forestall the "wholly avoidable tragedy." The suit said the Army formation unit failed to run the Black Hawk chopper astatine oregon beneath the mandatory altitude and the FAA controllers failed to abstracted craft successful airspace and contented information alerts erstwhile craft are successful an unsafe proximity.
The airlines and authorities agencies "utterly failed successful their responsibilities to the traveling public," the suit said.
The FAA and Army did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.
American said Flight 5342 was connected a modular attack to Reagan erstwhile the Army chopper — which was supra the published chopper way altitude — collided with it.
"American has a beardown way grounds of putting the information of our customers and squad members supra everything else," the institution said, adding it volition "defend American and PSA Airlines against immoderate ineligible enactment claiming the hose caused oregon contributed to this accident."
In May, the FAA barred the Army from chopper flights astir the Pentagon aft a May 1 adjacent telephone that forced 2 civilian planes to abort landings. The FAA said past week those Army chopper flights stay connected hold.
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