Family of Washington plane crash victim sues FAA, Army and airlines
Lawsuit accuses the FAA, the Army, American Airlines and PSA Airlines of negligence in the Jan. 29 collision that killed 67 people; NTSB cites multiple contributing factors and a final report is due next year.
WASHINGTON — The family of one of the 67 people killed when a passenger jet collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., filed a federal lawsuit in Washington on Wednesday, naming the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army, American Airlines and its regional partner PSA Airlines. The suit seeks to hold the agencies and airlines accountable for the Jan. 29 crash, which authorities say killed everyone on board Flight 5342 and the helicopter crew.
Casey Crafton's widow, a Connecticut resident raising three sons, filed the civil action and is represented by lawyers who say the defendants owed a heightened duty of care to passengers and failed to mitigate the risks posed by helicopter traffic near Reagan National Airport. The suit notes that PSA Airlines operated Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, to Reagan National.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have highlighted a long list of factors that likely contributed to the crash. The Black Hawk helicopter was flying well above the 200-foot altitude limit, but even if it had been at the correct altitude, the route provided only about 75 feet of separation between helicopters and planes landing on Reagan National Airport's secondary runway. The helicopter's altimeter may have provided faulty readings. The NTSB has also said the FAA failed to recognize an alarming pattern of near misses at the busy airport in the years before the crash and that overworked controllers were trying to squeeze as many planes as possible into the landing pattern with minimal separation on a regular basis. If any of those elements — or a number of other factors — had been different that night, the collision might have been avoided.
The lawsuit says the airlines failed in their duty to protect passengers because they were aware of the helicopter traffic around Reagan airport but failed to adequately train pilots to handle it and take steps to mitigate the risks. Other airline policies, such as allowing pilots to accept an alternate runway that intersects with the helicopter route and heavily scheduling flights in the second half of every hour, may have contributed. The PSA pilots should have reacted sooner when they received an alert about traffic in the area 19 seconds before the crash instead of waiting until the last second to pull up.
Among the jet's passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston, who were returning from an elite junior skaters' camp following the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. A figure skating tribute event in Washington raised $1.2 million for the crash victims' families. Others on the flight from Wichita included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas; four members of a steamfitters' union in suburban Maryland; nine students and parents from schools in Fairfax County, Virginia; and two Chinese nationals. There were also four crew members on the plane and three people in the helicopter's crew who were killed.
PSA Airlines operated the Wichita-originating Flight 5342 as a regional partner of American Airlines, a detail at the heart of the plaintiffs' claims against the airline and the government. The investigation into cause remains ongoing, with the NTSB planning to issue a final report next year.