Family of 1 of the 67 Washington plane crash victims sues the FAA, Army and American Airlines

Key Points

• The family of a victim from the recent plane crash in Washington, D.C., has filed a lawsuit against the FAA, Army, and American Airlines, marking the start of legal actions related to the incident.
• The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has identified several contributing factors to the crash, including poor traffic management at Reagan National Airport and faulty altimeter readings on the helicopter.
• The lawsuit claims the airlines were negligent in their duty to protect passengers, particularly by not adequately preparing pilots for the risks associated with helicopter traffic around the airport.
• Victims included members of the Skating Club of Boston returning from a skating camp, demonstrating the broad impact of the tragedy on various communities.

The family of one of the 67 people killed when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., sued the government and the airlines involved on Wednesday, saying they didn't recognize the warning signs after more than 30 documented near misses in the area.

Other families are expected to join this first lawsuit seeking to hold the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army, American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, accountable for the deadliest U.S. plane crash since 2001. PSA Airlines operated Flight 5342 that crashed Jan. 29.

The lawsuit says they “utterly failed in their responsibilities to the traveling public.”

The Army declined to discuss the details of the lawsuit, while American and PSA said they would fight any allegation that they caused or contributed to the collision.

“Flight 5342 was on a routine approach to DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) when the Army helicopter — that was above the published helicopter route altitude — collided with it,” the airlines said in a statement. “American has a strong track record of putting the safety of our customers and team members above everything else.”

The FAA said it “acted decisively” to improve safety by further restricting helicopter flights around Reagan. Air traffic controllers also stopped relying on pilots to maintain visual separation from other aircraft within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of the airport. On the night of the crash, a controller twice gave the helicopter pilots that responsibility after they said they saw the jet.

The lawsuit was filed by Rachael Crafton, the widow of Casey Crafton, who was killed in the collision. Her lawyers represent most of the victims' families.

A statement written by Rachael Crafton and read to reporters Wednesday by her brother-in-law described the family's despair.

“Nearly eight months ago, our lives were shattered in a moment, and the grief has been unimaginable. The future we dreamed about was taken away from us,” Dailey Crafton said.

Determining the cause of the crash

The National Transportation Safety Board has listed many issues that may have contributed to the crash, although its final report won't be ready until next year.

The Black Hawk helicopter was flying above the 200-foot (60-meter) limit, but even if it had been at the correct altitude, the route it was flying provided a scant 75 feet (23 meters) of separation between helicopters and planes landing at Reagan airport's secondary runway. The helicopter's flight data recorder indicated it was flying 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than its altimeter showed before the two aircraft collided.

The NTSB also said the FAA failed to recognize an alarming pattern of close calls near the airport in the years before the crash, and ignored concerns about helicopter traffic its controllers raised years earlier. Investigators also said overworked controllers regularly squeezed as many planes as possible into the landing pattern with minimal separation. Acknowledging these and other factors could have prevented the collision.

The lawsuit says the airlines failed in their duty to protect their passengers because the pilots had not been adequately trained to handle close-flying helicopters and the airline didn't effectively mitigate the risks.

Other airline policies, such as allowing pilots to accept the secondary runway that intersects with the helicopter route and heavily scheduling flights late in the hour, may have contributed.

“There is clear evidence that there were dozens of near misses and thousands of reports of congestion between commercial aircraft and military aircraft at Reagan National that were being ignored by the airlines,” said lawyer Bob Clifford, representing the families.

The lawsuit says the PSA pilots, who received an alert about traffic in the area 19 seconds before the crash, should not have waited until the last second to pull up. The lawsuit says the pilots' warning system showed the relative direction and altitude of the helicopter.

The pilots would also have heard controllers warn the helicopter that a plane like the one they were flying was close, although controllers didn't warn the PSA pilots directly.

Dailey Crafton said in the family statement he read that his brother, who worked in the aviation industry, was “betrayed by the system he trusted. We all were.”

Turning grief into action

Doug Lane lost his wife, Christine, and his 16-year-old son, Spencer — an aspiring Olympic figure skater — in the crash.

Addressing the news conference, Lane urged investigators and Congress to quickly determine what went wrong and take action to prevent future accidents.

“We’ve also turned our grief into action,” Lane said of the victims' families. “We collaborated with Congress on critical air safety reforms. We secured a much needed set of oversight investigations into the FAA, and we will not rest until similar investigations are underway into the U.S. Army.”

Bill and Renee Parente said they hope the lawsuit will present answers to lingering questions about the crash that killed their 34-year-old son, Anthony Parente, less than six months before he was due to get married.

Bill Parente said his family is mad because this crash didn't have to happen.

“We are on a mission to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bill Parente said after the news conference. “We have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”

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Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman and Rick Gentilo in Washington, D.C., contributed.