PSA Airlines

Is PSA Airlines safe?

PSA is a safe regional airline whose record now carries the deadliest US airline crash since 2001, a crash that investigators did not blame on PSA. We score it 73. On 29 January 2025, PSA flight 5342, sold as American Eagle, collided with an Army Black Hawk on its approach to Washington National, and all 64 people on board died. The NTSB's final findings put the cause on the FAA, the helicopter crew and air traffic control.

Most passengers never see the PSA name. The airline flies short American Eagle routes in CRJ regional jets from Charlotte, Philadelphia and Washington National, with AA flight numbers. It is wholly owned by American Airlines Group but holds its own FAA certificate, with its own pilots and maintenance. That is why we score it separately: American Airlines counts mainline flights only, and its page describes this crash in the text.

What happened to American Eagle 5342?

The CRJ700 from Wichita was a few minutes from landing on a clear night. The tower asked it to switch from runway 1 to the shorter runway 33, which put its final approach close to a charted helicopter route along the Potomac. An Army UH-60 on a night-vision training flight was on that route. Its crew told the tower they had the jet in sight, but the two aircraft collided about half a mile southeast of the airport and fell into the river. The 60 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants on the jet and the 3 soldiers on the helicopter died.

At its board meeting on 27 January 2026, the NTSB adopted its final report. The probable cause is the FAA's placement of the helicopter route so close to a runway approach, its failure to review that route and act on warnings, and the air traffic system's reliance on pilots seeing each other at night. It also found the helicopter crew did not keep visual separation, flew above the route's height limit because of altimeter errors the Army had not explained to pilots, and that the tower was overloaded. Among contributing factors, it said the collision warning systems on both aircraft could not give an effective alert in time. None of the 50 new recommendations in the final report is addressed to PSA or American.

Our rubric counts fatal accidents on the airline's flights, whatever the cause, because that is the passenger's risk. A fatal crash in the last 15 years puts the accident record in the 60 to 79 band. We put PSA at 70, in the middle: the toll was very high, but the causes lay outside the airline.

Lawsuits by families against the US government, American and PSA are combined in federal court in Washington, with a trial date of 12 April 2027, according to American's 2025 annual report. American says the claims against it and PSA are without merit.

PSA's record before 2025

Before Washington, PSA had no fatal accident in our 20-year window. The only other aircraft it lost was a Dornier 328 that had already been retired and was stored in a contractor's hangar in San Marcos, Texas, when the hangar caught fire in June 2008. No one was on board.

The events that do show up are typical for a busy regional airline:

• 7 February 2020: a CRJ900 from Charlotte hit turbulence descending into Knoxville at night. A flight attendant was seriously hurt and 22 people had minor injuries, even though the seatbelt sign had been on all flight.
• 2017 to 2019, Charlotte: several PSA CRJs were damaged on the crowded ramp. Two hit each other during pushback in 2019, one struck a baggage tug in 2017 and seriously injured its driver, and one hit a deer on take-off and returned to land. The same aircraft, N709PS, was the one lost in 2025.
• January 2021: PSA grounded most of its 130 CRJ700s and CRJ900s after the FAA ordered an inspection of nose-gear doors. The FAA said PSA had found and reported the issue itself, which is how the system is meant to work, though it disrupted American's network.

What does PSA fly?

At the end of 2025, PSA operated 60 CRJ700s and 86 CRJ900s for American, with four more CRJ900s in storage, according to American's 10-K. It is a single-family fleet, which keeps training and maintenance simple. The CRJ is a proven design from the 1990s and 2000s, but it is not fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary, and PSA does not publish an average age. The CRJ900s are mostly from the 2010s; some CRJ700s, including the one lost in Washington, were built in the early 2000s.

Flying American Eagle with less worry

• Look for "operated by" on short AA flights. Flights out of Charlotte, Washington National and Philadelphia to smaller cities are often PSA. Envoy, Piedmont, Republic and SkyWest fly the others.
• Keep your belt fastened when seated. The 2020 Knoxville injuries happened with the sign on; most turbulence injuries are to people who are not belted.
• Expect delays at Washington National. Since the crash the FAA has limited arrivals and helicopter traffic there. Slower arrivals are the price of the fix.

How we scored it

The 2025 collision sets the accident record at 70. FAA oversight scores 85, a little below American because PSA is not an IATA member and we could not confirm its IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary status. An all-CRJ fleet without published ages (65), the 2021 grounding and 2020 turbulence (72) and a network built around Washington National and Charlotte (74) give 73, close to Jazz, another regional airline whose fatal crash was largely caused outside the cockpit.