They Saw the Wrong Plane: The DC Midair Collision, Second by Second

On 29 January 2025, an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk collided over the Potomac River beside Reagan National Airport. 67 people died. The helicopter crew told the tower, twice, that they could see the jet. They were most likely looking at the wrong aircraft. This is the full reconstruction, second by second, from the NTSB's final report. 00:00 Two aircraft, one piece of sky 01:19 Two flights 03:40 Half the conversation 06:10 Runway three three 09:22 Traffic in sight 12:01 Pass behind 14:44 The river 15:49 Why didn't they see it? 18:45 Fifteen thousand close calls 20:04 Probable cause Sources NTSB, Aviation Investigation Report AIR-26-02, Midair Collision over the Potomac River, PSA Airlines Flight 5342 and US Army PAT25 (27 January 2026): https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/A... US Army investigation, released 8 October 2026 (as reported by AVweb): https://avweb.com/aviation-news/army-... Map imagery: USGS National Agriculture Imagery Program (public domain). Facts checked 29 October 2026. About this video Reconstruction: simplified maps and graphics. Aircraft positions come from figure 2 of the NTSB report; positions between its timestamps are interpolated. Narration is AI-generated (Google Gemini text-to-speech). Many illustrations and the thumbnail are AI-generated. Images labelled "ARCHIVE" are from the NTSB report. The night-vision view is from an NTSB observation flight, not the accident night. Radio and cockpit words are quoted from the NTSB report. Alert sounds are recreations, not the original recordings. The NTSB report does not name the crews, and neither do we. In memory of the 67 people on board Flight 5342 and PAT 25. #DCMidair #NTSB #AirCrashInvestigation