VP Vance calls on US ‘to do a better job’ with aviation safety after ‘incredibly heartbreaking’ DC plane crash

Vice President JD Vance called for the U.S. to strengthen aviation safety measures while expressing his sympathies for the families of those killed in the recent midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

“Our hearts go out to everybody who was affected by it. I’ve actually made a couple of phone calls to the relatives of the deceased… and it’s just incredibly heartbreaking,” Vance told Maria Bartiromo in an exclusive “Sunday Morning Futures” interview this week.

“You’ve got moms who are mothers to very young children. You’ve got a dad who had a one-year-old baby on the Army helicopter,” he continued. “We have to remember the human tragedy of this, because, when Americans have a tragedy, we can all come together — Democrat, Republican or Independent — and just say, ‘We love those folks. We’re going to do right by them in order to support them through what is the unspeakable tragedy of the last couple of days.'”

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Tragedy struck the skies over Washington, D.C. last Wednesday when an Army helicopter collided with a descending American Airlines regional jet, sending both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River. After rescue attempts, officials determined there were no survivors. 

President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Cabinet Secretaries Pete Hegseth and Sean Duffy spoke to members of the press about the catastrophe from the White House briefing room last week, cautioning against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices they pinned on the Biden administration. 

While acknowledging that the cause of the crash had yet to be determined, Trump slammed Biden-era DEI policies that allegedly lowered aviation standards. He called for a merit-based approach instead.

“I do think that we also have to do a better job at the policy so that we make sure that aviation is as safe as it possibly can [be],” Vance, speaking on a similar note, told Bartiromo.

“Now, we haven’t had an aviation accident like this in about 15 or 20 years. We want to make sure that we try to never have an aviation accident like this again, or at least make them as minimal as possible and that does mean that we have to talk about the policies now,” he added.

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Vance speculated that the Biden and Obama administrations contributed to the state of aviation in America, including shortages of air traffic controllers. 

“In fact, there have been a number of lawsuits [against the Obama and Biden administrations] from people who would like to become air traffic controllers… who basically said, ‘We were told not even to apply because of the color of our skin,’ because they were White people who wanted to be air traffic controllers. And under the regime of the Biden administration, they weren’t welcome.”

The Vice President went on to explain the unfortunate reality that, due to Biden’s standards, America doesn’t have the “best and brightest” in those positions. More importantly, he told Bartiromo, it means that even when good people are hired in those roles, they’re typically over-stressed about having to work long hours due to chronic staffing shortages among air traffic controllers.

“This is a scandal, thankfully, that has stopped under the leadership of President Trump,” he added. “It’s why I’m actually optimistic about aviation safety, but it’s also why we’ve had way too many near-misses and, unfortunately, a fatal crash just a couple of days ago.”