On Jan. 29, just before 9PM EST, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with an Army Black Hawk (Sikorsky H-60) helicopter. All 64 passengers and crew on the Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet and the three helicopter crewmen were killed. An immediate rescue operation in the frigid waters of the Potomac quickly became a recovery operation, with searches for bodies and the regional jet’s black boxes (cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder) underway.

Investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Army are ongoing. The hope is that a reason can be found for the incident, with such information useful to avoid future accidents like this anywhere commercial airplanes and military helicopters share common airspace.

Anyone who flies commercially, and certainly in and out of Reagan National Airport (DCA), begins to think that they could have been on the ill-fated flight. Maneuvering through DCA’s airspace is particularly challenging, given the no-fly zones around the Capital and the White House and the airport’s short runways,........

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