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This is the first major disaster in President Donald Trump’s second term, and we hoped he would defy expectations and rise to the moment.
Reagan Washington National Airport, as seen from Arlington, after an American Eagle flight collided with a helicopter while approaching Reagan Washington National Airport and crashed in the Potomac River, Virginia, on Jan.
29, 2025.A number of young and promising ice skaters spent last week competing in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kan., gliding closer to their Olympic dreams. Some of them lingered after the competition to participate in a national development camp.over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night. All 64 people on the jet and the three soldiers in the Army Black Hawk are believed dead.It’s hard to wrap our minds around such grief and devastation. The weight of 67 lives — their talents, their attachments and their promise — gone in the flash of a fireball in the night sky.happened 16 years ago. But the midair collision within sight of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, one of the busiest and most protected airspaces in the world, is a terrible reminder that we have let our guard down.It’s too early to say what went wrong. Officials said the weather was clear and that the aircraft were following standard flight patterns. Federal agencies are investigating. This is the first major disaster in President Donald Trump’s second term, and we hoped he would defy expectations and rise to the moment. His role in the immediate aftermath was to be the comforter in chief, to focus on the victims, their loved ones and an American public rattled by tragedy. Instead, Trump appeared to blame air traffic control, then shifted blame to the helicopter crew and singled out Democrats and diversity, equity and inclusion policies as the culprits of the crash, even though, as he acknowledged, the investigation had just begun. Pressed to explainWe can only imagine how the president’s comments compound the sorrow of the families of the soldiers killed in the crash. As the president pointed fingers Thursday at a news conference, the bodies of the two helicopter pilots — a man and a woman — were still underwater.have driven speculation in that direction, as has the fact that military training missions are conducted so close to a major airport. But there’s a broader question about the efficacy of aviation’s “Swiss cheese model,” a system of multiple safeguards and redundancies meant to prevent catastrophe in case of a failure. After many years of close calls and near-collisions in or near U.S. airports, we find ourselves at another tragic turning point.must raise their alertness. As for the rest of us, our hearts should keep vigil with the families waiting for their loved ones to be recovered from the Potomac.Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editorial Page Editor.
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