WATCH: NTSB Chairman Homendy testifies about DCA midair crash investigation at Senate hearing

Key senators and families of the 67 killed in a plane crash with an Army helicopter near the nation’s capital are convinced that advanced aircraft positioning systems recommended by experts nearly two decades ago would have prevented last year’s tragedy. But it is still unclear whether Congress will approve a bill that would require every plane and helicopter to be used at every busy airport.

Watch the Senate Commerce Committee hearing in the video player above.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing Thursday to highlight why the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended since 2008 that all planes be equipped with one system that can broadcast their positions and another system to receive data about the location of other planes. Currently only the system that broadcasts the location is required. The hearing will review all 50 of the NTSB’s recommendations to prevent another mid-air collision like the one that occurred on January 29, 2025.

He watches: What the NTSB hearings revealed about the mid-air collision in Washington that killed 67 people

Everyone aboard the helicopter and the American Airlines plane flying from Wichita, Kansas, including 28 members of the snowboarding community, died when the plane collided and plunged into the Potomac Glacier.

The Senate has already unanimously approved a bill that would require all aircraft flying around busy airports to install both types of broadcast and automatic dependent surveillance systems. However, leaders of key House committees appear to want to craft their own comprehensive bill that addresses all of the NTSB’s recommendations rather than pass what is known as the ROTOR Act immediately. ADS-B Out systems constantly broadcast a plane’s position and speed and have been in demand since 2020. But systems that can receive those signals and create a display that shows pilots that all the air traffic is around them are not standard.

Facing headwinds in the House of Representatives

Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz said he is concerned that some people are talking about the possibility of adding loopholes to the bill that would exempt regional airlines and private jets from the mandate. The Texas Republican said that would undermine the effort, which is illogical given that the plane involved in this collision belonged to a regional airline.

“Flying can only be safe when everyone follows the same standards,” Cruz said. He said he hopes the House of Representatives will vote on the bill within the next two weeks to send it to the president’s desk.

But Rep. Sam Graves, who leads the House Transportation Committee, said Thursday he does not plan to consider the Senate bill.

“I haven’t looked much at Rotor’s bill. We’ll do our own bill,” Graves said.

If the American Airlines plane and helicopter had also been equipped with one of the ADS-B In systems that can receive position data, the NTSB, victims’ families and key lawmakers say, the pilots may have been able to avoid the collision because they would have received nearly a minute of advanced warning.

Receiving systems could have provided more warning with an indication of where the other aircraft was. But for the helicopter’s ADS-B Out system, which is supposed to broadcast its location, to work, it must be up and running properly, which was not the case the night of the accident.

The tragedy could have been prevented

These positioning systems are one measure that may have been able to overcome all of the systemic problems and errors identified by the NTSB in the disaster. That’s why this requirement was approved by NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy — the only witness called to attend the hearing — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and all senators. This is the 18th time the NTSB has recommended this technology.

“This seems like a no-brainer, right? Especially since this is nothing new that they’re proposing,” said Amy Hunter, whose cousin Peter Livingston died on the plane with his wife and two young daughters.

The FAA also failed to act on warnings from its controllers after a strikingly similar near-miss in 2013 about the dangers posed by helicopters around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and an alarming number of near-misses recorded in the agency’s own data, Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.

“The FAA’s failure to stand up to the blaring alarm bells, and to shout that it is a matter of when — not if — one of DCA’s near-misses becomes a fatal tragedy, is unfortunately emblematic of a chronic crisis that has plagued the FAA for years,” Duckworth said.

Subsequently, the FAA made several changes including prohibiting helicopters from flying along the route where the accident occurred when an aircraft lands on DCA’s secondary runway and requiring all aircraft to use their ADS-B Out systems to broadcast their positions.

The anniversary of the accident and an NTSB hearing into the causes of the accident have made recent weeks difficult for the families of the victims. Now the Olympics remind Hunter and others that their loved ones — like young Everly and Alydia Livingston — will never have a chance to fulfill their dreams of competing for a gold medal.

Cost concerns for aircraft owners

The biggest stumbling block is cost. Upgrading some airline planes can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, putting a prohibitive burden on some — especially regional airlines with thinner profit margins like the one that flew the plane that collided with the Army helicopter. Some also worry about whether general aviation pilots can afford upgrades. These systems have not even been designed and approved for some airline aircraft, particularly the CRJ models involved in this accident.

But some airlines have already begun adding the technology to their planes, in part because in addition to the safety benefits, the systems can help increase the number of planes that can fly to the airport by spacing them out more precisely. American Airlines leads the industry, having added this technology to its Airbus A321 aircraft over the past few years, equipping more than 300 of its nearly 1,000 aircraft to date. Homendy said that American officials told her that the cost of retrofitting was less than $50,000 per aircraft.

Any aircraft more than a decade old likely does not have any of these systems installed. Most newer aircraft have at least one ADS-B Out system that broadcasts their position.

But nearly three-quarters of pilots of business jets and smaller single-engine Cessna and Bonanza jets use handheld devices that cost just $400 that can tap into that location data and display information about nearby planes on an iPad. So it doesn’t seem like the legislation will create significant expenses for them. Homendy carried one of the small receivers during her testimony to demonstrate how easy it is for pilots to get ADS-B warnings.

Tim Lilley, a pilot himself, said the presence of these two GPS systems would have saved the lives of his son Sam, who was the plane’s co-pilot, and everyone else who died. Owners of small planes have an affordable option, but even expensive upgrades to larger planes will be worth it, he said.

“If these recommendations had been fully implemented, this incident would not have occurred,” Lilly said. “I don’t know what value we place on human life, but 67 people are still here today.”

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report from Washington, D.C