The U.S. government has admitted it was liable for the deadline collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines airplane that killed 67 people.
The midair collision happened when the American Airlines regional flight, American Eagle flight 5342, was approaching Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29, Reuters reported.
The Department of Justice said it was at fault, saying that it “owed a duty of care to plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident.”
The DOJ continued saying that the pilots of both aircraft “failed to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid each other.”
The Justice Department also said that an air traffic controller with the Federal Aviation Administration did not adhere to an agency order, Reuters reported. But it did not say that the controller were the cause of the crash, ABC News reported.
The Army Black Hawk crew told the controllers it would keep a “visual separation” from the commercial airplane that was landing at Reagan, CNN reported.
But the 209-page filing said, “The United States admits pilots flying PAT25 failed to maintain proper and safe visual separation from AE5342.”
The filing also did not say that the crowded air traffic at the airport that is just outside of the nation’s capital was an “accident waiting to happen.”
It did admit that the airspace is “busy at times and the risk of midair collision cannot be reduced to zero” and “that aircraft have come into close proximity to other aircraft within the Class B airspace near DCA on certain occasions.”
American Airlines has asked that the lawsuit stemming from the deadly crash be thrown out, CNN reported.
Attorney Robert Clifford, who is suing on behalf of a family of one of the crash victims, said “the United States admits the Army’s responsibility for the needless loss of life in the crash ... as well as the FAA’s failure to follow air traffic control procedure."
He added, “government, however, rightfully acknowledges that it is not the only entity responsible for this deadly crash, and, indeed, it asserts that its conduct is but one of several causes of the loss of life that January evening.”
The NTSB is expected to release its final report in January, ABC News reported.
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