After the January 29, 2025 collision between an American Eagle regional jet from Wichita and a military Black Hawk helicopter, the FAA closed the Potomac helicopter route near DC’s National airport with narrow exceptions. Military training flights are explicitly barred.
The National Defense Authorization Act purports to impose new safety requirements on military helicopters, based on lessons from the crash. But it actually allows these flights to resume.
Section 373 of the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act is the “Manned Rotary Wing Aircraft Safety” provision, adding a new 10 U.S.C. § 2654 “Aircraft safety: requirements for certain highly trafficked domestic airspace.”
The Secretary of a military department may not authorize any manned rotary wing aircraft of DoD to operate a training mission in covered airspace unless that aircraft, while being operated, is actively providing warning of its proximity to nearby commercial aircraft in a manner compatible with those aircrafts’ TCAS (traffic alert and collision avoidance system).
Under this law, helicopters on training missions have to be electronically “seen” by airline TCAS – broadcasting appropriate transponder ADS-B information so conflict alerts can be generated – in order to operate in this airspace.
That’s presented as raising the bar for military training flight safety. But the rule can be waived.
- The Secretary of the relevant military department, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Transportation, can waive the “must be TCAS-compatible” requirement.
- To do so, the military Secretary must determine that the waiver is in the national security interest, and a “commercial aviation compatibility risk assessment” has been done to identify and mitigate the risk of operating without that TCAS-compatible warning.
- Then, if the waiver will last more than 30 days, they have to notify the Armed Services and Transportation committees in both chambers and provide that risk assessment.
The same section that codifies a TCAS-visibility requirement also gives the Pentagon a path to waive it. And it allows the resumption of helicopter training flights near commercial aircraft.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy has put Congress on blast over this. And honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Here’s her letter to Congress.
.@NTSB Chair @JenniferHomendy: "The NTSB vehemently opposes section 373 of the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA…it does not in any way enhance safety, in fact, it reverses safety changes made after the midair collision…" pic.twitter.com/KfYUQ6J3wf
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 10, 2025
Instead of a clean prohibition on military training in this airspace until full safety reforms are in place, this language would be codifying training there as acceptable as long as there’s either TCAS compatibility or a waiver of that requirement. That locks in a permissive regime where operational necessity becomes the catch-all justification for waivers.
TCAS doesn’t offer Resolution advisories at the altitude where the Helicopter hit the Regional Jet! It will make them more see able electronically but that’s it. Washington Airtraffic Controllers are great but this doesn’t change that much for them and if I were still flying an airplane that was small enough to utilize Rwy 33 on a regular basis I wouldn’t accept an approach to that runway with any low level Helicopters on the river anymore at night.
Wow, we really do learn nothing. NTSB is right to sound the alarm here. Such recklessness is likely going to cost more lives. Preventable tragedies all around. *deep sigh*
I have navigated that route at night . At that time the maximum altitude was 200 feet after clearance to cross under the approach path. The 60 crew is still in the wrong…..VFR see and avoid…..a basic aviation tenet.
Jennifer Homendy is a hero.
We are governed by idiots.
and it has nothing to do with the party