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(WASHINGTON) — The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday presented a cockpit visual simulation demonstrating what contributed to the deadly mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jet near Washington, D.C., last year.

The simulation indicates it was very difficult for both aircraft to see each other before the January 2025 crash that killed 67 people as the jet was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, according to the NTSB.

The first video shows the last three minutes before the collision from the viewpoint of the right seat of the helicopter. 

Around 8:46:15, a magenta circle with a label “Flight 5342” appears just above the horizon on the right side of the upper portion of the screen.  The label “Flight 5342” fades out about 8:46:35. The magenta circle tracks the lights of Flight 5342 and remains visible until the airplane becomes visually recognizable about a minute later.

 After a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System warning indicated in the transcript, the local controller on the ATC recording is heard asking the pilots if they have the CRJ (Flight 5342) in sight and the pilots confirm they do. It remains unclear what they thought they had in sight. There was only one controller working both the helicopter and plane traffic, the NTSB said.

The simulation screen goes black at the moment of the collision. 

The second animation shows the viewpoint of pilots from Flight 5342 as the plane approaches the runway to land. According to the cockpit voice recorder transcript shared by the NTSB, the last words about one second before the crash from both the first officer and the captain were “oh” and “ohhh ohhhh” as the animation shows the helicopter colliding with the plane. 

About 90% of wreckage from both aircraft was recovered by the NTSB.  

A third animation shows what the local controller from the DCA tower saw at the time of the crash as they were handling the air traffic and issuing instructions. Based on the recordings, the NTSB said Flight 5342 was not warned by the controller of the nearby helicopter at any point. A conflict alert came 26 seconds before the collision between the two aircraft as they were 1.6 miles apart, according to the NTSB. 

According to the NTSB, the local tower said they were concerned about the close proximity of the helicopter and Flight 5342. 

“This coupled with the conflict alert that was active at the time, the controller should have issued a safety alert, which would have included updated traffic advisory information and an alternate course of action if feasible, neither were done. In this case, had a safety alert been issued, it would have increased the situation awareness of both crews and alerted them of their closing proximity to one another. Additionally, a timely safety alert may have allowed action to be taken by one or both crews to avoid avert the collision,” NTSB investigator Brian Soper said at the hearing.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Chair Jennifer Homendy said she fears that some of the agency’s safety recommendations, which will be issued at the conclusion of the hearing, may once again go unimplemented. 

“Of course I’m concerned. We have 300 aviation recommendations that still haven’t been implemented. Those recommendations were issued because somebody died or was injured, and they have not been implemented yet. So here we are again,” Homendy told ABC News.

“So yes, at the end of this, I am concerned that we’re going to issue recommendations and that they won’t be implemented,” Homendy said. “I can tell you, and anyone who knows me knows I vigorously advocate for the implementation of our recommendations. I don’t care when it is. Could be 50 years later, as I did with positive train control, and I will not hold back on these.” 

At Tuesday’s hearing, NTSB investigators will present their investigative findings to board members and the public. NTSB board members, including Homendy, will then question investigators and the parties to the investigation. 

At the end of the hearing, the board members will vote on the probable cause of the crash and the agency’s safety recommendations. The NTSB can only make recommendations and does not have the authority to enforce them, therefore they are not always adopted.

Though a formal final report will be released two weeks after the hearing, this hearing will mark the end of what Homendy described as “one of the most complex investigations” conducted by the agency, which they had aimed to conclude by the first anniversary of the mid-air collision. 

Homendy told ABC News the investigation “was not easy and it was definitely not straightforward.” 

“We will start in one direction and then take it in a different direction, depending on what we’re finding, and then we’ll exclude things that didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. But we have to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re tracking all of that down, all that evidence to support that it wasn’t a factor, while also looking at the issues that were,” Homendy said. 

Homendy said the helicopter altimeter discrepancy is what surprised her the most in this investigation. 

“The altimeters I did not see coming, that we would have some problems with how the altimeters were reading,” Homendy said.

During last year’s three-day investigative hearing, investigators said they found discrepancies in the altitude data shown on radio and barometric altimeters on Army helicopters after conducting test flights following January’s accident.

It is likely that the helicopter crew did not know their true altitude due to notoriously faulty altimeters inside this series of Black Hawks, according to the investigation. At their closest points, helicopters and planes flew within 75 feet of each other near DCA, an astonishingly close number. During the hearings, the NTSB was told Army Black Hawks can often have wrong readings and a margin of error of +-200 feet.

Another key focus of Tuesday’s hearing is the close proximity of the helicopter route to the runways at Reagan National Airport. According to the NTSB, which cited FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close-proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024. 

Homendy said warnings about the close proximity were raised by people, but they were ignored. 

“Years ago, that hot spot was identified and [people] repeatedly tried to say that the helicopter route needed to be moved, and nobody listened. It was like the ultimate in government bureaucracy,” Homendy said. 

“They were completely ignored. Told it couldn’t be done, not responded to, said it would probably be too political. Those are quotes from our interviews, but they went nowhere.” 

At last year’s hearing, FAA officials cited “bureaucratic process” as a deterrent to addressing these issues.

Other topics expected to be discussed include the approval of helicopter routes near DCA,  the experience level of the air traffic controllers working in the tower at the time of the crash, the visibility study, and the testing of the barometric altimeters.  

When asked what stays with her from this investigation, Homendy pointed to a personal item recovered with the wreckage. 

“In the hangar, we had the Black Hawk laid out. We had the wreckage laid out for 5342 and on the side next to 5342 there were some personal effects, and a lot of people mentioned different things, but every time I passed, there was a brown teddy bear, just eight inches maybe, and it was muddy and dried mud, dried water, and I just kept looking at the teddy bear, and that’s the thing that sticks with me,” Homendy said. 

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(HOUSTON, Texas) — Less than a week after returning from their historic 10-day, 694,481-mile journey to the moon and back, the Artemis II crew answered questions on Thursday about their successful mission.

During a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of the Mission Control Center, the three NASA astronauts and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut spoke fondly of their time aboard the Orion spacecraft, Integrity, and recalled how they came together as a crew during the first mission to the moon in more than 50 years.

Reid Wiseman, who served as the Artemis II commander, said, “What an amazing journey that was. First and foremost, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, just thank you. This was an unbelievable adventure, and it was made possible by this crew and the support of each other throughout the whole thing.” 

He added, “We are bonded forever. I mean, that’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family.”

“I am here to tell the world: we launched as friends, and we came back as best friends,” he added.

When asked by ABC13 reporter Nick Natario whether the gravity of what they’ve accomplished has hit them and how it may have changed them, the crew said they were focused on completing the mission.

Victor Glover, the pilot for the mission, added, “We did what we said we were going to do, and now we’ve got to step out and just face that reality.”

Christina Koch, one of the flight’s mission specialists, said, “When my husband looked me in the eye on that video call and said, ‘No, really, you’ve made a difference.’ It brought tears to my eyes, and I said, that’s all we ever wanted.”

She added, “When we come before you now, we’ve done this together. We took your hearts with us and your hearts lifted our hearts.”

Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to travel into deep space, said, “I found it really refreshing to find out how people have followed the mission and been creative with the mission and there’s lots of funny stuff online. And that really resonates with me a lot, and it just reinforces something I already knew, but humans are just great people in general. We don’t always do great things. We’re not always in our integrity, but our default is to be good and to be good to one another.” 

When asked if the experience of traveling to deep space created a “sense of universal connectedness,” Wiseman said, “I turned to Victor, and I said, I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we’re looking at right now, because it was other worldly and it was amazing.”

In terms of their sleep about Orion, Koch said that “space sleep is the best sleep ever,” and now that she’s back on Earth, she said, unlike after her International Space Station mission, this time, “every time I’ve been waking up or in the first few days, I thought I was floating. I truly thought I was floating and I had to convince myself I wasn’t.”

Wiseman complimented the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System and said it’s ready for the Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2027.

“My own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis III Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape,” said Wiseman. “This vehicle really handled very well.”

When asked what they brought with them on the trip, Wiseman said he took some notes from friends, some great quotes and a bracelet that his daughter had made for him a few years prior. 

The crew was asked what advice they would give to younger people “who are looking skywards.”

Wiseman said one thing that he thinks society has lost is the pursuit of challenging goals.

“You have to go do really hard, really challenging things and you have to go move the needle,” said Wiseman. “We have to get our hands out there and engaged. Our hands and our minds have got to be engaged.”

Glover encouraged young people to “really get comfortable asking questions and then listening to their peers, but also their mentors. I think that’s been a game-changer for all of us.”

Koch added that people should “find your fulfillment,” “do what scares you,” and “support those around you.”

Hansen said people should “just follow the example that people saw here, don’t do it alone, and share what you’re trying to accomplish with others, because you need the support of others to do big things, and so share your goals. Be brave enough to share them.”

With the next Artemis mission scheduled for as early as next year, the crew discussed their contributions to what comes next for NASA and its pursuit of a moon base.

“We were very much lifted up by the notion that we would get to contribute to astronauts doing this all over again, much sooner than we thought that we were going to be focused on the moon base, on surface operations,” said Koch. “And I would say, if nothing else, we are feeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency.”

Wiseman added that “if we had a first flight lander on board that thing, I know at least three of my crewmates would have been in it, trying to land on the moon.”

“We have to be willing to accept a little more risk than we were willing to accept in the past, and to just trust that we will figure it out in real time. We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We’re going to have to trust each other and crews and Mission Control to work through real problems,” Hansen added.

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(CALIFORNIA) — A year ago, the deadly wildfires in Southern California left behind a trail of destruction and forced desperate families to flee for their lives.

Charred vehicles filled the streets in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where the flames reduced houses to ash-covered shells.

The embers are gone and the dust has settled a year later, but most of those houses are still vacant lots and families remain stuck in limbo.

“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir returned to the neighborhood to mark the anniversary of the disaster and reunited with some of the residents he met in January 2025. Many said they are still struggling to pick up the pieces and some are making the tough decision to leave their the neighborhood they once called home.

Nearly 24,000 acres burned in the Palisades fire alone, with nearly 7,000 structures — most of them homes — going up in smoke. The blaze erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, along with the Eaton fire that destroyed more than 9,000 buildings. Together, the fires claimed the lives of at least 31 people.

A year ago in Pacific Palisades, Alessandro Vigilante raced to his two boys’ school to pick them and flee the fires, while his wife stayed behind to grab their most important documents before their house burned down.

Hours later, Muir met the father of two as he returned to see what was left of his home for the first time. Vigilante and his family lost everything, but were thankful to still have each other.

“We’ll figure out the rest,” he told Muir last year.

Today, the site of Vigilante’s home is an empty grass-covered lot surrounded by a white picket fence — the only thing that remains of his old home. Speaking with Muir again, he said getting insurance money was not an easy process.

“Literally, we had the last check, like, two weeks ago,” he told Muir, nearly a year after the fires.

Pointing to the lot, Vigilante reflected on that process.

“You don’t expect to have to discuss anything. It’s a total loss,” he said. “Basically looking at every single detail that they can think of from the handles that you had on the doors to the type of countertops. And again, that was mind-blowing, because I’m like, well, when we signed the policy, that’s the moment you should have decided whether my house was worth that much or not. Now it’s too late.”

Vigilante decided to sell the lot rather than rebuild, he noted, even though he said the land is now half the value it was when he moved in four years before.

“It’s OK. It was a chapter of our life,” he said, with a sigh.

Down the street from Vigilante, Liz Jones showed Muir the empty lot where she now plans to rebuild her family’s home from the ground up.

Last year, she saw the charred remains of her daughter’s car in one of Muir’s reports. That’s when she knew her home was gone.

“Is that when reality set in?” Muir asked her last year.

“One hundred percent,” Jones said.

Jones said she and her husband were determined to rebuild, and they are among the lucky few who were able to get some insurance money. Jones continued to carry her pride for the community around her neck, with a necklace that spelled out “Palisades.”

Preston and Kelsey Hayes had just broken ground on their new home when Muir met them at the site.

A year ago, the couple, who have two children, donned protective gear and masks to survey the damage and wondered if they would ever come back.

“Were you concerned at all about the soil and what might be contaminated from the fires?” Muir asked the couple at the construction site.

“Yeah for sure,” Preston Hayes said.

“And you felt reassured by the tests?” Muir asked.

“Yes,” Kelsey Hayes said.

As they looked out across their neighborhood a year after the fires, they knew that their neighbors would not all be as fortunate.

“We want the community to be the same. I don’t think it will be, unfortunately,” Preston Hayes said.

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