The Original Sin

Through the hours of NTSB family briefings in the days following the Flight 5342 collision, one thing jumped out at me more than anything else: the way aircraft are kept apart in busy airspace — including over our nation’s capital — is rudimentary.

In the National Capital Region, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters communicate with air traffic control on different radio frequencies, so pilots only hear half of the story. And even those incomplete radio transmissions can be “stepped on” by other transmissions or an inadvertent keying of a microphone, causing critical context to be lost.

At a time when my 14-year-old son can strap on a headset and be immersed in a realistic virtual reality landscape, air traffic controllers look at screens reminiscent of the Atari 2600 console of my 1980s childhood. At the time of the collision, controllers at Reagan National were still using strips of paper to keep track of flights.

Rapid-fire communication between air traffic controllers and pilots does much of the work of keeping aircraft at a safe distance. But the pace can lead to imprecision. “Pass behind the CRJ” at an airport with a steady stream of nearly identical CRJs taking off and landing.

The system can become so overloaded that it’s often just easier to do things the old-fashioned way. It has a fancy name: “visual separation.” But what it means is that the air traffic controller delegates responsibility for keeping aircraft at a safe distance to individual pilots — often at a pilot’s own request — entrusting them to use their eyes to avoid hitting anything.

They are literally looking out the window.

We live at a time when cars can drive themselves. I can pull out my iPhone and see my son’s real-time GPS position as he scooters down my town’s bike path. My boat, which is 18 years old, uses GPS technology to show me other boats in my vicinity on a screen and sound an alarm if I’m on a collision course with any of them.

But pilots flying commercial airliners with tens or even hundreds of people onboard — and smaller aircraft on a potential collision course with those airliners — are often just looking out the window.

As I sat in the NTSB briefing room the week after the Flight 5342 tragedy, I wondered how it was possible that technology didn’t exist to show pilots all of the aircraft around them on a screen and alert them if they were getting dangerously close to any of them.

As a layperson who has been using GPS in one form or another for decades, I just assumed that something like that was used in every aircraft.

It’s not.

And that’s not because the technology doesn’t exist. It has for decades. It’s called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B.

When the federal government first began requiring seat belts in automobiles in the 1960s, wouldn’t it have been strange if they required the belts but not the buckles to latch them into?

That is what the FAA has been doing with ADS-B for nearly two decades.

In October 2007, the FAA proposed a new requirement that aircraft flying in the nation’s busiest airspace be capable of broadcasting their position using ADS-B by the year 2020. It highlighted the success of its “Capstone” program in Alaska, where aircraft were equipped with cockpit avionics that showed pilots the position of other aircraft, leading to a 45 percent reduction in fatal accident rates among “Part 135” operators such as charter, cargo, and commuter flights.

But there are two sides to the ADS-B equation, and broadcasting location is only half of it. In order for the system to be valuable, aircraft must also be equipped to receive ADS-B transmissions from other aircraft and present this information to pilots on a display.

In the same document where the FAA touted the success of the Capstone Program, it declined to make receiving ADS-B signals and using them to give pilots additional situational awareness — a capability known as “ADS-B In” — a requirement.

Seat belts without the buckles.

The NTSB and airline pilots were quick to point out that the FAA got it wrong.

The NTSB, in a February 14, 2008 letter:

The Safety Board is very concerned that the FAA does not plan to require ADS-B In capability because, according to the NPRM, it “has not been identified as a requirement for maintaining the safety and efficiency of NAS operations.” The Board believes that this assessment is incorrect and that the equipage of aircraft with ADS-B In capability will provide an immediate and substantial contribution to safety, especially during operations in and around airports.

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), in a February 29, 2008 letter:

…ALPA believes that the full realization of increased capacity and enhanced safety can not be realized until “ADS-B In” (i.e. information received by the aircraft on other aircraft positions) equipage is also mandated for operations at designated locations, routes, and altitudes. Therefore, it is imperative that the FAA include a requirement for ADS-B In and a timeline for implementation as a part of this ADS-B rule.

One hundred thirty-nine days after the second of these letters was written, my son, Spencer, was born.

During the 16 years, 6 months, and 12 days between that day and the day he died, he joined his adoptive family, learned to walk, spoke his first words, became a brother, became a student, explored diverse interests, became an independent and intelligent young man, and chased his dream to become an elite figure skater.

Meanwhile, throughout Spencer’s entire lifetime, the FAA failed repeatedly to correct an error it made before he was born. It never required aircraft operating in busy airspace to be equipped with ADS-B In to help pilots avoid collisions.

This wasn’t an accident. A systematic lobbying playbook was being run to prevent ADS-B In from being required.

And it’s still being run today.

On February 12, 2026, nearly 18 years to the day from the date of the NTSB’s letter highlighting the safety value of ADS-B In, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation at a hearing titled “The NTSB Final Report on the DCA Midair Collision.”

This exchange occurred:

Committee Chairman Ted Cruz: The NTSB conducted a thorough investigation into this accident. What did the NTSB investigation show about what would have happened if both aircraft had been equipped with ADS-B In?

Chairwoman Homendy: The accident wouldn’t have happened.

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