Aviation professional’s sickening admission about DC airplane crash at ‘harmful’ Reagan airport
A tragedy like the deadly crash of a passenger plane and Army chopper this week was bound to happen given the increase in near-collisions at US airports in recent years, an aviation expert told the Welcome to MAGAland podcast, from the DailyMail.com.
Former U.S. Air Force navigator Jim Brauchle who has represented many victims of airline disasters in lawsuits, added that experts had feared a tragedy like the one on Wednesday was imminent, because of the increasing number of close encounters between aircraft.
‘I’ve gone record saying that that we’re having a lot of close calls, and that I was hopeful that it wouldn’t happen, but I think a lot of people in the aviation world suspected that eventually something was going to happen,’ Brauchle added.
‘With all those close calls, something ultimately was going to happen.’
All the passengers and crew were killed when the Bombardier CRJ700 jet – flown by American Airlines regional subsidiary American Eagle – was struck by a Black Hawk helicopter on an Army training sortie on Wednesday night. The military crew of three was also killed.
Daily Mail’s executive politics editor Kelly Laco and chief reporter Germania Rodriguez Poleo broke down the red flags that pointed to a potential on-air collision on the latest episode of Welcome to Magaland: Inside Trump’s Second 100 Days.
‘As a news reporter I’ve been covering an increasing amount of close calls in airports between aircrafts,’ Rodriguez Poleo said on Welcome to Magaland.
‘There is an issue with short staffing of air traffic controllers. After the pandemic, we have seen several close calls over the last years.
Rescue boats search the waters of the Potomac River for survivors after the deadly plane crash
‘It does seem like this was something that could have and should have been prevented.’
Brauchle said it’s too early to draw conclusions, but the main question is how these two aircraft came to occupy the same airspace.
Aviation lawyer Jim Brauchle said experts had feared a tragedy like the one on Wednesday was imminent
However, he added that there will likely be many lawsuits filed by the victims’ families and the tragedy will hopefully lead to safer air travel in the country.
He added: ‘The one good thing about aviation is they try to learn from past accidents and try to make corrections to prevent future accidents.
‘So hopefully, out of a tragedy something good will come out that will prevent this from happening again.’
The midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight from Kansas killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft, officials said Thursday.
The passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita and two of their Russian coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
The pilots of the American Eagle jet were Captain Jonathan Campos, 34, and First Officer Samuel Lilley, DailyMail.com exclusively revealed. And both flight attendants who were on that tragic flight have been revealed as Ian Epstein and Danasia Elder.
The plane was found upside-down in three sections in waist-deep water, and first responders were searching an area of the Potomac as far south as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, roughly 3 miles south of the airport, Donnelly said. The helicopter wreckage was also found. Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.
The collision is the deadliest U.S. air crash since 2001.
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