Aviation Regulation and NTSB

Two House committees on Thursday unanimously advanced a revised version of the Alert Act aviation safety bill, winning support from the National Transportation Safety Board but not yet from most families of the 67 people killed in the Jan. 29, 2025 midair collision near Washington, D.C. The NTSB says the bill now addresses its long‑standing recommendation to require aircraft flying around busy airports to carry Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast In (ADS‑B In) systems so pilots can see precise locations of nearby traffic, a gap the board says contributed to the fatal collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. Chair Jennifer Homendy, who had blasted an earlier draft as "watered down," now backs the measure after NTSB experts helped rewrite it to mandate actions by the FAA, Transportation Department and the military, including changing Army practices that kept helicopter transponders off even during training flights. Families of the victims, while "encouraged" by the changes, are withholding endorsement and urging Congress to adopt the stricter statutory timelines and performance standards contained in a Senate bill that narrowly failed, warning that open‑ended rulemaking and negotiated processes invite deadly delays. The House measure now heads to the full chamber before negotiations with the Senate, setting up a fight over how fast and how forcefully Washington will move to close what investigators call systemic weaknesses and ignored warnings in the nation’s airspace‑safety regime.