ESPN News Services
Dec 18, 2025, 07:41 AM ET
The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the actions of an air traffic controller and Army helicopter pilot played a role in causing the Jan. 29 collision between an airliner and a Black Hawk near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, including a group of elite young figure skaters.
It was the deadliest plane crash on American soil in more than two decades. The figure skaters, their parents and coaches who had just attended the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, were among those on the plane.
The official response, made in court documents responding to the first lawsuit filed by one of the victims' families, said the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated visual separation procedures that night. Plus, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots' "failure to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid" the airline jet makes the government liable.
But the filing suggested that others, including the pilots of the jet and the airlines, may also have played a role. The lawsuit also blamed American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, for roles in the crash, but those airlines have filed motions to dismiss.
The government denied that any air traffic controllers or officials at the Federal Aviation Administration or Army were negligent.
Among the figure skating community killed in the crash were six members or associates of the Skating Club of Boston, including teenage skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, their mothers, and their coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed twice in the Olympics.
A tribute and remembrance ceremony was held in the skaters' honor when Boston hosted the world championships in March.
At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter collided with the American Airlines regional jet while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C., officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
Robert Clifford, one of the attorneys for the family of victim Casey Crafton, said the government admitted "the Army's responsibility for the needless loss of life" and the FAA's failure to follow air traffic control procedures while "rightfully" acknowledging others -- American Airlines and PSA Airlines -- also contributed to the deaths.
The families of the victims "remain deeply saddened and anchored in the grief caused by this tragic loss of life," he said.
The government's lawyers said in the filing that "the United States admits that it owed a duty of care to plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident."
An American Airlines spokesman declined to comment on the filing, but in the company's motion to dismiss, American said "plaintiffs' proper legal recourse is not against American. It is against the United States government. ... The Court should therefore dismiss American from this lawsuit." The airline said that since the crash it has focused on supporting the families of the victims.
The lawsuit had accused the airlines of not doing enough to mitigate the risks of flying so close to helicopters around Washington, D.C., and not adequately training their pilots to handle it.
The National Transportation Safety Board will release its report on the cause of the crash early next year, but investigators have already highlighted a number of factors that contributed, including the helicopter flying 78 feet higher than the 200-foot limit on a route that allowed only scant separation between planes landing on Reagan's secondary runway and helicopters passing below. Plus, the NTSB said, the FAA failed to recognize the dangers around the busy airport even after 85 near misses in the three years before the crash.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
