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Key senators and the families of the 67 dead in an airliner collision with an Army helicopter<\/a> near the nation’s capital are convinced that advanced aircraft locator systems recommended by experts for nearly two decades would have prevented last year’s tragedy. But it remains unclear if a bill will pass Congress requiring the systems around busy airports.<\/p>\n The Senate Commerce Committee is planning a hearing Thursday to highlight why the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending since 2008 that all aircraft be equipped with one system that can broadcast their locations and another one to receive data about the location of other aircraft. Only the system that broadcasts location is currently required. The hearing will review all 50 of the NTSB’s recommendations to prevent another midair collision like that of Jan. 29, 2025.<\/p>\n All aboard the helicopter and the American Airlines jet flying from Wichita, Kansas, including 28 members of the figure skating community<\/a>, died died when the aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River. <\/p>\n The entire Senate already unanimously approved the bill<\/a> that would require all aircraft flying around busy airports to have both kinds of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems installed. However, leaders of the key House committees seem to want to craft their own comprehensive bill addressing all the NTSB recommendations instead of immediately passing what’s known as the ROTOR act<\/a>. The ADS-B out systems<\/a> continually broadcast an aircraft’s location and speed and have been required since 2020. But ADS-B in systems that can receive those signals and create a display showing pilots were all air traffic is located around them are not standard.<\/p>\n If the American Airlines jet had been equipped with one of the ADS-B in systems that can receive location data, the NTSB and the victims’ families and key lawmakers say, the pilots may have been able to pull up in time to avoid the Black Hawk that inexplicably climbed into the plane’s path.<\/p>\n The receiving systems should have provided nearly a minute’s warning along with an indication of the helicopter’s position instead of the 19-second warning the pilots received with the existing collision-avoidance system on the plane. But for that to work the helicopter’s ADS-B out system that’s supposed to broadcast its location would have to be turned on and working correctly, which wasn’t the case on the night of the crash.<\/p>\n But these locator systems are one of the measures that might have been able to overcome all the systemic problems and mistakes the NTSB identified in the disaster. That’s why NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy \u2014 who will be the only witness at the hearing \u2014 Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and all of the Senate endorsed it. <\/p>\n \u201cThis seems like a no-brainer, right? Especially when this is not a new thing that they\u2019re proposing,\u201d said Amy Hunter, whose cousin Peter Livingston died on the flight with his wife and two young daughters. <\/p>\n Afterward, the FAA made several changes<\/a> including prohibiting helicopters from flying along the route where the crash occurred anytime a plane is landing on the secondary runway at Reagan National Airport.<\/p>\n