SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This week marks one year since the midair collision of a military helicopter and a passenger jet near the nation's capital. The crash killed 67 people, making it the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in decades. Now families of the victims are still pushing for improvements to air safety. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: When Tim Lilley heard about the midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the first thing he did was try to contact his son, Sam.
TIM LILLEY: And so I start texting Sam to, you know, discuss this accident that happened. Of course, he's not answering me.
ROSE: That wasn't unusual. Both Sam and Tim Lilley were professional pilots, and pilots don't text when they're working. But it wasn't long before Tim and his wife, Sheri Lilley, suspected something was very wrong. They knew Sam was a pilot for PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American, so they got his fiance on the phone.
SHERI LILLEY: I think one of us may have said, is he flying into DCA? And she started crying immediately. She knew that something terrible had happened. And she responded, I spoke to him right before he left Wichita. Because we knew that's where the flight originated, that was our confirmation.
ROSE: The midair collision killed 67 people and touched hundreds of lives. Though it's likely that none of the victims' families had quite as much flight experience or understanding of the airspace as the Lilleys. Not only was their son Sam the first officer on American Airlines flight 5342, but Tim Lilley had flown that same helicopter route hundreds of times as an Army helicopter pilot.
T LILLEY: So I kind of became, for the family members, the person they'll come to to ask aviation questions. That kind of gave us an unwritten moral obligation to move forward and try to make sure that no other families ever have to go through this.
ROSE: A year later, the Lilleys and other crash victims' families are still working to prevent another tragedy. The Trump administration has made restrictions on helicopters around the Reagan National Airspace permanent. Families of the victims say they're grateful for that, but they're pushing for even more improvements to aviation safety. And some are supporting a bipartisan bill sponsored by Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARIA CANTWELL: The families up here with us are reminders that these are real people with real loved ones that are gone.
ROSE: Cantwell and Cruz say their bill, known as the ROTOR Act, would require aircraft operators to equip their fleets with an advanced tracking technology known as ADSB. The bill would close loopholes, Cruz says, that allowed exemptions for military helicopters, including the Black Hawk that was not using its ADSB transponder during a training flight when it collided with the passenger jet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TED CRUZ: This special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29 crash that claimed 67 lives.
ROSE: The Senate passed the bill unanimously last month, but it faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives, partly because of opposition from Sam Graves, a powerful committee chairman from Missouri. In a statement to NPR, Graves said that, quote, "Congress needs to get this right," unquote, and that lawmakers should wait for a final report from federal safety investigators before moving forward. In an interview with Politico, Graves went further, calling the ROTOR Act, quote, "emotional legislation" and citing concerns about the cost for small plane owners. Still, the bill's supporters remain committed, including Sheri Lilley.
S LILLEY: We believe firmly that the objections that are being stated are fairly flimsy.
ROSE: The National Transportation Safety Board will meet tomorrow to say what investigators think caused last year's crash. But Tim Lilley already has some ideas. He believes the helicopter's pilots made several critical mistakes on the night of the crash, including flying above 200 feet, the limit for that route. He thinks they never saw the plane before the collision. Still, Lilley doesn't blame the helicopter's crew. He blames their training, and he wants the Army to do something about it.
T LILLEY: I love Army aviation. I spent 20 years of my life there. This terrible tragedy, there was so much to learn from it. And so I just think that if I could engage with them, you know, we can have that conversation, and we can fix a lot of the problems that led to this accident.
ROSE: The Lilleys say they've reached out to the Army. That conversation hasn't happened yet, but the Lilleys say they intend to keep trying until it does. Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
