(Washington, D.C.) Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford told lawmakers he will not roll back tightened safety rules in the Washington, D.C. airspace put in place after a Jan. 29, 2025 collision between a commercial airliner and an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people.
Bedford’s pledge, delivered to the House aviation subcommittee, comes as Congress fights over provisions in a major defense authorization bill that safety experts, airlines, unions and the National Transportation Safety Board say could weaken helicopter safety rules around the capital. Families of the 67 victims have also pressed lawmakers to keep the post-crash changes intact, warning that any backtracking would put more lives at risk in one of the country’s most crowded and sensitive corridors.
Bedford left little room for compromise in his testimony. He told the House aviation subcommittee he
“won’t allow operations in the airspace over the nation’s capital to revert back to the way they were before January’s deadly aircraft collision near Reagan National Airport.”
Invoking the toll of the Jan. 29, 2025 crash, Bedford told lawmakers:
“It’s unfortunate, it’s beyond unfortunate, it’s tragic that the focus that we have today — the attention and our sort of unified, galvanized effort to modernize — was paid for with the lives of 67 Americans. It’s unfortunate, but that sacrifice can’t go to waste. We have to deliver for them and for the rest of the American people.”
He also drew a firm line around the safety steps the FAA adopted after the collision.
“There’s no rolling back of the safety procedures we put in place since that horrific evening. Our vigilance isn’t waning,”
Bedford said.
At the center of the debate is how aircraft, including military helicopters, operate around Reagan National and the broader Washington, D.C. airspace. Bedford said the FAA now requires all aircraft to use ADS‑B — Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast — systems in that airspace “in the wake of the collision.” The agency also changed its practices so helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace, and controllers no longer rely on pilots to ensure visual separation between aircraft in the capital region.
Those changes, while technical, have become a high-stakes political flashpoint because they set limits and expectations in a place where civilian traffic, government aircraft, and military missions can overlap in tight airspace near the nation’s capital. Supporters say the new approach removes ambiguity that can arise when crews try to spot each other visually and makes it harder for aircraft to operate without broadcasting their positions.
Critics of the defense authorization bill provisions argue the legislation could undercut exactly that progress. They warn the bill would allow military helicopters to seek waivers to operate again in the crowded D.C. airspace without broadcasting their locations, effectively rolling back the universal ADS‑B requirement imposed after the crash. According to the source material, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, senators, airlines and transportation unions “sharply criticized” the helicopter provisions, reflecting a rare alignment of safety investigators, labor groups and carriers against language they say could reopen the risks that followed the pre-crash status quo.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, framed the provision as a late addition that lawmakers did not fully scrutinize and that would erase safety steps taken after the disaster. Cruz said the provision
“was airdropped in at the last moment,”
and argued it would unwind safety actions taken by President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make D.C. airspace safer. He described it as
“the special carve-out [that] was exactly what caused the January 29th crash that claimed 67 lives.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, has been working with Cruz to amend the defense bill. If that fails, the two senators have vowed to push separate legislation to require all aircraft to broadcast their locations, according to the source material. That effort would be aimed at preventing exceptions from swallowing the rule in a region where even small gaps in tracking and separation can have lethal consequences.
The post-crash measures Bedford vowed to keep are also entwined with White House directives that reached beyond the mechanics of air traffic control and into the politics of staffing and safety oversight. The crash prompted a Presidential Memorandum titled “Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety” from the White House, addressed to the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA Administrator. The memorandum ordered a review of “all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years” and “such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety,” citing the Jan. 29, 2025 collision near Reagan National as the trigger.
A separate executive order titled “Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation,” issued Jan. 21, 2025, directed the Department of Transportation and the FAA to rescind DEI initiatives and return to “non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring.” It also ordered a review of the performance of individuals in critical safety positions and called for replacing any “incapable” personnel.
Taken together, the White House actions and the congressional fight over helicopter operations have put Bedford in the position of defending both the substance of the FAA’s post-crash rules and the agency’s broader approach to safety oversight under political pressure. His testimony to the House aviation subcommittee sought to separate the agency’s immediate operational steps — like ADS‑B use and separating helicopters and planes — from efforts in Congress that could reopen room for waivers in the Washington, D.C. airspace.
Families of those killed in the Jan. 29, 2025 crash have become a visible force in the debate, lobbying against any weakening of the new rules. Amy Hunter, who
“lost her cousin and his family in the crash,”
warned lawmakers that the defense bill would reverse progress made since the collision. The bill
“now threatens to undo everything, all the progress that was already made, and it will compromise the safety around Reagan National Airport,”
Hunter said.
Their involvement has kept the toll of 67 victims from fading into a sterile policy argument about equipment mandates and airspace diagrams. In the wake of the collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the number has become shorthand in hearings and negotiations for the stakes of decisions that, to the public, can sound like abstract regulatory tweaks. Bedford explicitly tied that toll to the urgency of modernizing and maintaining safeguards, telling lawmakers the push now underway
“was paid for with the lives of 67 Americans,”
and that the
“sacrifice can’t go to waste.”
Bedford’s stance also comes as the FAA faces scrutiny for separate safety actions taken during the recent government shutdown, when the agency ordered airlines to cut thousands of flights because of air traffic controller staffing concerns and what the source material describes as “worrisome safety data.” Bedford defended the decision, drawing a line between keeping schedules intact and keeping operations safe when staffing and stress levels were uncertain.
Those shutdown-related cuts mirrored an Emergency Order Establishing Operating Limitations on the Use of Navigable Airspace issued on November 7, 2025, according to the source material. The Emergency Order, signed by the FAA Administrator and issued in Washington, D.C., requires Part 121 and commuter/scheduled Part 135 carriers at 40 “High Impact Airports” to cut scheduled domestic operations between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. by 10%, phased in between November 7 and November 14, 2025. It also restricts commercial space launches to 10:00 p.m.–6:00 a.m. to relieve pressure on the National Airspace System.
In a letter to lawmakers about the shutdown cuts, Bedford said:
“I am confident that decreasing operations during an uncertain and stressful time was the right decision on behalf of the flying public and the United States.”
The statement underscores how Bedford is positioning himself as an administrator willing to accept immediate disruption — fewer flights, tighter rules, less flexibility — if he believes safety requires it.
The overlapping controversies have also made Reagan National and the broader Washington, D.C. airspace a symbol of the wider challenge facing aviation regulators: how to enforce uniform safety expectations while dealing with competing demands from the military, commercial carriers, unions, lawmakers, and a traveling public that expects both safety and reliability. The defense bill provisions, as described in the source material, would carve out a pathway for military helicopters to seek waivers from the ADS‑B requirement, a change opponents fear would erode the clarity that the FAA imposed after the Jan. 29, 2025 collision.
Bedford’s testimony put him on the side of those arguing that the safety net built since Jan. 29, 2025 should be treated as a floor, not a temporary response. By emphasizing that helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace and that controllers no longer depend on pilots to maintain visual separation, he presented the FAA’s approach as one that reduces reliance on last-second human judgment in crowded skies.
The political crosscurrents are likely to continue as lawmakers weigh changes to the defense authorization bill and as senators pursue amendments or separate legislation. But Bedford’s remarks to the House aviation subcommittee were aimed at settling at least one question: whether the FAA would support returning to the pre-crash approach in the Washington, D.C. airspace. His answer, delivered with repeated references to the victims, was no.
For travelers and crews flying into and out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the debate in Congress is not just about what equipment is installed or what language appears in a defense bill. It is about whether the post-crash rules that Bedford described — the universal ADS‑B requirement, the separation of helicopters and planes, and the end of visual-separation reliance — remain the baseline in the skies over the capital, or whether exceptions will be allowed back in.
The FAA has pointed the public to its official safety information and regulatory updates through its main site, which includes aviation safety material and agency directives at the Federal Aviation Administration.
As families like Hunter’s continue to press lawmakers, and as senators including Cruz and Cantwell push to lock in a requirement that all aircraft broadcast their locations, Bedford’s message has been that the agency will treat the changes made after the Jan. 29, 2025 crash as permanent safety improvements.
“There’s no rolling back of the safety procedures we put in place since that horrific evening. Our vigilance isn’t waning,”
he said, tying the argument back to the 67 people who died and the promise, as he put it, that the nation must
“deliver for them and for the rest of the American people.”
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford pledged to keep tightened safety rules in Washington, D.C., after the Jan. 29 collision that killed 67 people. The agency now requires ADS‑B for all aircraft, separates helicopters from planes, and removed reliance on visual separation. Congress is debating defense bill language that could permit military waivers, prompting opposition from safety experts, airlines, unions, the NTSB and victims’ families. Bedford argued the post‑crash measures must remain permanent to prevent future tragedies.
