Category: Business Wires

So many things went wrong last Jan. 29 to contribute to the deadliest plane crash on American soil since 2001 that the National Transportation Safety Board isn’t likely to identify a single cause of the collision between an airliner and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people at its hearing Tuesday.

Instead, their investigators will detail what they found that played a role in the crash, and the board will recommend changes to help prevent a similar tragedy. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration already took the temporary restrictions it imposed after the crash and made them permanent to ensure planes and helicopters won’t share the same airspace again around Reagan National Airport.

Family members of victims hope those suggestions won’t be ignored the same way many past NTSB recommendations have been. Tim Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines plane, said he hopes officials in Congress and the administration will make changes now instead of waiting until another disaster.

“Instead of writing aviation regulation in blood, let’s start writing it in data,” said Lilley, who is a pilot himself and earlier in his career flew Black Hawk helicopters in the Washington area. “Because all the data was there to show this accident was going to happen. This accident was completely preventable.”

Over the past year, the NTSB has already highlighted a number of the factors that contributed to the crash including a poorly designed helicopter route past Reagan Airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet higher than it should have been, the warnings that the FAA ignored in the years beforehand, and the Army’s move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopter’s location more clearly.

The D.C. plane crash was the first in a number of high-profile crashes and close calls throughout 2025 that alarmed the public, but the total number of crashes last year was actually the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with 1,405 crashes nationwide.

Experts say flying remains the safest way to travel because of all the overlapping layers of precautions built into the system, but too many of those safety measures failed at the same time last Jan. 29.

Here is some of what we have learned about the crash:

Helicopter route didn’t ensure enough separation

The route along the Potomac River the Black Hawk was following that night allowed for helicopters and planes to come within 75 feet of each other when a plane was landing on the airport’s secondary runway that typically handles less than 5% of the flights landing at Reagan. And that distance was only ensured when the helicopter stuck to flying along the bank of the river, but the official route didn’t require that.

Normally, air traffic controllers work to keep aircraft at least 500 feet apart to keep them safe, so the scant separation on Route 4 posed what NTSB chairperson Jennifer Homendy called “an intolerable risk to flight safety.”

The controllers at Reagan also had been in the habit of asking pilots to watch out for other aircraft themselves and maintain visual separation as they tried to squeeze in more planes to land on what the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has called the busiest runway in the country. The FAA halted that practice after the crash.

That night a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. But at the investigative hearings last summer, board members questioned how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.

The Black Hawk was flying too high

The American Airlines plane flying from Wichita, Kan., collided with the helicopter 278 feet above the river, but the Black Hawk was never supposed to fly above 200 feet as it passed by the airport, according to the official route.

Before investigators revealed how high the helicopter was flying, Tim Lilley was asking tough questions about it at some of the first meetings NTSB officials had with the families. His background as a pilot gave him detailed knowledge of the issues.

“We had a moral mandate because we had such an in-depth insight into what happened. We didn’t want to become advocates, but we could not shirk the responsibility,” said Lilley, who started meeting with top lawmakers in Congress, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Army officials not long after the crash to push for changes.

The NTSB has said the Black Hawk pilots may not have realized how high the helicopter was because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder.

Investigators tested out the altimeters of three other Black Hawks of the same model from the same Army unit and found similar discrepancies.

Past warnings and alarming data were ignored

FAA controllers were warning about the risks all the helicopter traffic around Reagan airport created at least since 2022.

And the NTSB found there had been 85 near misses between planes and helicopters around the airport in the three years before the crash along with more than 15,000 close proximity events. Pilots reported collision alarms going off in their cockpits at least once a month.

Officials refused to add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to the crash that killed her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife, Donna, and two young daughters, Everly and Alydia, who were both promising figure skaters.

“It became very quickly clear that this crash should never have happened,” Feres said. “And as someone who is not particularly familiar with aviation and how our aviation system works, we were just hearing things over and over again that I think really, really shocked people, really surprised people.”

LONDON — The European Union opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Monday after his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.

European regulators also widened a separate, ongoing investigation into X’s recommendation systems after the platform said it would switch to Grok’s AI system to choose which posts users see.

The scrutiny from Brussels comes after Grok sparked a global backlash by allowing users through its AI image generation and editing capabilities to undress people, putting females in transparent bikinis or revealing clothing. Researchers said some images appeared to include children. Some governments banned the service or issued warnings.

The 27-nation EU’s executive said it was looking into whether X has done enough as required by the bloc’s digital regulations to contain the risks of spreading illegal content such as “manipulated sexually explicit images.”

That includes content that “may amount to child sexual abuse material,” the European Commission said. These risks have now “materialized,” the commission said, exposing the bloc’s citizens to “serious harm.”

Regulators will examine whether Grok is living up to its obligations under the Digital Services Act, the bloc’s wide-ranging rule book for keeping internet users safe from harmful content and products.

In response to a request for comment, an X spokesperson directed the Associated Press to an earlier statement that the company remains “committed to making X a safe platform for everyone” and that it has “zero tolerance” for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.

The X statement from Jan. 14 also said it would stop allowing users to depict people in “bikinis, underwear or other revealing attire,” but only in places where it has been deemed illegal.

“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice president at the commission, said in a statement.

“With this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA, or whether it treated rights of European citizens — including those of women and children — as collateral damage of its service,” said Virkkunen, who oversees tech sovereignty, security, and democracy.

Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI launched Grok’s image tool last summer. But the problem began snowballing only late last month when Grok seemingly granted a large number of user requests to modify images posted by others. The problem was amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative with fewer safeguards than rivals, and because Grok’s responses on X are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.

The EU investigation covers only Grok’s service on X, and not Grok’s website and standalone app. That’s because the DSA applies only to the biggest online platforms.

There’s no deadline for the bloc to resolve the case, which could end in either X pledging to change its behavior or a hefty fine.

In December Brussels issued X with a 120-million euro (then-$140 million) fine as part of the earlier ongoing DSA investigation, for shortcomings including blue checkmarks that broke the rules on “deceptive design practices” that risked exposing users to scams and manipulation.

The bloc has also been scrutinizing X over allegations that Grok generated antisemitic material and has asked the site for more information.

Malaysia and Indonesia blocked access to Grok earlier this month in response to the controversy, becoming the first countries to do so.

On Friday, Malaysian authorities said they lifted the temporary restriction after the company implemented additional security and preventive measures, without giving further details. Malaysian regulators said they met last week with X’s representatives and would continue to monitor the situation.

PARIS — The captain of a tanker intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea by the French navy on suspicion of shipping oil in violation of sanctions against Russia was being held in custody on Sunday for questioning.

The ship’s Indian captain, 58, was handed to judicial authorities following the diversion of the oil tanker, Grinch, and its arrival at anchorage in the Gulf of Fos-sur-Mer, the Marseille prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The investigation is being conducted by the Maritime Gendarmerie’s Investigation Unit in Toulon, jointly with the Marseille Ship Safety Centre, on charges of failure to fly a valid flag, according to the statement, which added that the crew, also of Indian nationality, was being kept on board.

“The purpose of the investigation is to verify the validity of the flag flown by the tanker and the documents required for its navigation,” the statement said.

The Grinch came from Murmansk in northwestern Russia and is suspected of being part of the sanctioned Russian “shadow fleet.” A video provided by the French military showed members of the navy boarding the ship from a helicopter earlier this week.

Russia is believed to be using a fleet of over 400 ships to evade sanctions over its war on Ukraine. France and other countries have vowed to crack down.

The fleet comprises aging vessels and tankers owned by nontransparent entities with addresses in nonsanctioning countries, and sailing under flags from such countries.

Last September, French naval forces boarded another oil tanker off the French Atlantic coast that President Emmanuel Macron also linked to the shadow fleet. Putin denounced that interception as an act of piracy.

That tanker’s captain will go on trial in February over the crew’s alleged refusal to cooperate, according to French judicial authorities.