PSA Airlines Aviation Accidents: What the NTSB Records Show

Who Flew Your Flight: What PSA Airlines Is and How It Operates

PSA Airlines is an air carrier whose aircraft appear in NTSB records as Bombardier CRJ-series regional jets. An air carrier is a company that carries passengers or cargo for hire. PSA Airlines appears in the NTSB's records as an air carrier flying scheduled passenger service under Part 121 of the federal aviation regulations, the set of rules in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations that applies to scheduled airline operations.

The NTSB's final report on accident DCA25MA108 lists PSA Airlines as the operator, records its operating certificate as "Flag carrier (121)," and lists the business name for that flight as "American Airlines flight 5342." That is why many readers arrive here after searching for an American Eagle crash or an American Airlines accident: the flight a passenger books, the name on the ticket and the company that actually flies the aircraft can be different. The site keeps a separate page on American Airlines NTSB records for records naming that carrier as operator.

Across the records, three Bombardier CRJ variants appear:

• the CL-600-2C10, the model in the 2025 Washington accident and in record DCA19CA102;
• the CL-600-2D24, in record DCA20CA071;
• the CL-600-2B19, in records DCA19CA035 and DCA17CA197.

The 2025 report also notes that the CL-600-2C10 is the CRJ700, built by MHI (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) RJ Aviation, formerly Bombardier. It records that the aircraft in that accident was built in 2004, had 80 seats and two engines, and was registered to UMB Bank NA as trustee rather than to PSA Airlines.

For someone looking at a claim, these details matter because the operator, the owner of the aircraft and the manufacturer can be separate companies, and the records describe each role without assigning fault. A family or passenger may find it useful to compare the ticket and booking confirmation with the operator named in the NTSB record, since that comparison is often the first step in working out which companies were involved.

The January 29, 2025 Collision Near Washington, D.C. — NTSB Case DCA25MA108

The NTSB's final report states that on January 29, 2025, about 8:48 p.m. eastern standard time, a CRJ700 registered N709PS, "operated by PSA Airlines as American Airlines flight 5342," collided in flight with a Sikorsky UH-60L helicopter operated by the U.S. Army under the callsign PAT25. The report places the collision about 0.5 miles southeast of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, with both aircraft striking the Potomac River in southwest Washington, D.C.

According to the report, the 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants and 60 passengers on the airplane died, as did all 3 crewmembers on the helicopter. Both aircraft were destroyed. The flight was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Kansas, flying under an instrument flight plan, in night visual conditions.

The NTSB is the independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating civil aviation accidents. A probable cause is the NTSB's own statement of why it believes an accident happened. Here the investigation is closed with a final report, first published February 17, 2026. The report states that the NTSB determines the probable cause to be:

"The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) placement of a helicopter route in close proximity to a runway approach path; their failure to regularly review and evaluate helicopter routes and available data, and their failure to act on recommendations to mitigate the risk of a midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA); as well as the air traffic system's overreliance on visual separation in order to promote efficient traffic flow without consideration for the limitations of the see-and-avoid concept. Also causal was the lack of effective pilot-applied visual separation by the helicopter crew, which resulted in a midair collision."

The report names additional causal factors, including the control tower team's loss of situation awareness under a high workload, and the Army's failure to ensure its pilots understood altimeter error tolerances. It lists contributing factors as well, including the limits of the collision alerting systems on both aircraft and "airline scheduling practices at DCA." The full list is in the report, and the site's page on the 2025 Reagan National midair collision covers it in more depth.

For a grieving family, the most important legal point about this report may be what it cannot do. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b), "No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report." The NTSB's own report repeats this and states that a factual report that may be admissible is available through its docket. A probable-cause finding, however detailed, is not a court's finding of legal responsibility, and any civil case has to prove its facts with its own evidence.

If You Were on Another PSA Airlines Flight: The Other NTSB Records

Four other NTSB records in the dataset name PSA Airlines as the operator. For these, the site has only the summary facts below. Dates and locations are not stated here, and no official page for any of them is linked.

• DCA20CA071 involved a Bombardier CL-600-2D24, with the highest injury recorded as Serious.
• DCA19CA102 involved a Bombardier CL-600-2C10, with the highest injury recorded as Minor.
• DCA19CA035 involved a Bombardier CL-600-2B19, with the highest injury recorded as Minor.
• DCA17CA197 involved a Bombardier CL-600-2B19, with the highest injury recorded as Serious.

For each of the four, the NTSB dataset carried a probable-cause statement as of October 17, 2026, meaning the NTSB reached a stated conclusion for each event. This page does not describe those conclusions, and nothing here should be read as suggesting a cause for any of them.

These records are a tally the site assembled from NTSB data, not an NTSB statistic about the airline. They show that an event was investigated and how severe the most serious injury was recorded to be, not who, if anyone, was at fault. For a passenger or crewmember hurt in one of these events, that distinction matters: the record confirms an investigation took place, but a claim would still rest on its own evidence.

The record number is often how the NTSB's file for an event is identified. Someone who believes they were on one of these flights may match the aircraft model with their own travel details, such as tickets, booking confirmations and any airline correspondence, and may ask the NTSB or an attorney for help locating the matching file.

What Part 121 Air Carrier Rules and the NTSB Investigation Mean for Your Evidence

Federal law sets the operating rules for a scheduled airline. The 2025 report states that flight 5342 was "operating under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 as a scheduled domestic passenger flight." Part 121 is the federal rulebook for that kind of flying, and an operator flying under it holds an FAA-issued operating certificate, which the report records for PSA Airlines. For a family, this confirms which set of federal operating rules applied to the flight. Whether any particular requirement was met is a separate question this page does not address, because it does not quote Part 121's specific requirements.

The investigation runs on its own federal rules, and they explain why the NTSB's work is not a verdict. Under 49 C.F.R. § 831.4, the NTSB investigates "to determine the facts, conditions, and circumstances relating to an accident," uses those results to determine probable causes and to issue safety recommendations, and runs "fact-finding proceedings with no adverse parties" that "are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights, liabilities, or blame of any person or entity." In plain terms, no one is on trial in an NTSB investigation, and its conclusions do not decide anyone's legal rights.

The rules also shape where key evidence goes. Under 49 C.F.R. § 831.13, parties taking part in an investigation must generally give the NTSB the information they obtain about the accident, including items such as photographs, wreckage documentation, flight data and cockpit voice recorder information, unless the NTSB authorizes them to keep it. The 2025 report lists PSA Airlines among the participants, so much of this material flows to the NTSB during the investigation.

Cockpit recordings have their own rule. Section 1154(a) of the same federal statute generally bars a party in a lawsuit from using discovery to obtain a cockpit recording or the parts of a transcript the NTSB has not made public. It allows a court to permit that discovery only after reviewing the material privately and deciding it is necessary for a fair trial, and then under a protective order.

Whether someone is legally responsible for an injury or death is decided in a civil case under the law that applies to it, typically state tort law. A family weighing a claim may ask how the NTSB's factual docket, public transcripts and their own records can be used, and what a court may permit beyond that.

What Families and Injured Passengers May Face After a Fatal or Serious Aviation Accident

When a flight ends in death or serious injury, families often hear two legal terms. A wrongful death claim is brought for the losses the survivors suffer because someone died. A survival action is a claim the person who died could have brought, which continues after death on behalf of that person's estate. Who may bring each, and what each covers, depends on the state's law. The site's page on aviation wrongful death claims explains these in more detail.

Depending on the state, the categories of damages the law may allow can include economic losses, such as medical expenses and lost income, and non-economic losses, such as pain and suffering or loss of companionship. Whether any of them is available, and in what form, depends on the state's rules and on what the evidence shows about duty, breach, causation and harm. An accident, however terrible, does not by itself prove anyone's fault.

Limitation periods, which are the deadlines for filing a lawsuit, differ from state to state, as do rules on shared fault and limits on damages. The place of the accident, where people lived and where a case is filed can each affect which law governs. The site's aviation accident lawyer hub explains how these layers fit together across the United States.

After an accident like this, the records that usually matter include medical and death records, the airline's and any incident reports, the NTSB's factual docket, tickets and booking confirmations, letters from the airline or insurers, and the names of witnesses. Because § 1154(b) keeps NTSB reports out of a civil damages case, the evidence a family's case relies on comes from the facts themselves rather than from the NTSB's conclusions.

If you lost someone on flight 5342 or were hurt on another PSA Airlines flight, a conversation with our attorney can cover which state's deadline may apply, who the possible parties are, and how the investigation record fits in. You can request a case evaluation when that feels right.