Speculation has emerged on Chinese social media that flaws in an airplane made by Boeing, a U.S. aerospace manufacturer that has faced a raft of safety issues in recent years, was responsible for a midair collision between a passenger plane and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that took place on January 29– the worst accident in U.S. civilian aviation since 2009.
This speculation is unfounded. The American Airlines passenger plane involved in the collision was not manufactured by Boeing.
On January 29, an American Airlines passenger plane collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter (UH-60) as it was approaching its landing at Ronald Reagan Airport near Washington. The two planes exploded midair before crashing into the Potomac River below. All 60 passengers and 4 crew members on the commercial flight and three soldiers on the helicopter are believed to have died in the crash.
Suspicions about Boeing’s supposed role appears to have originated on Weibo. “Guyan Muchan,” a widely-followed Weibo user, attributed the collision to a Boeing plane accident. Another Weibo user wrote a post claiming that “Boeing, the giant of the US aviation industry, is really not good. The loopholes in the aircraft system have claimed countless lives. Now even regional airliners have become full of fatal risks?”
However, AFCL has found that the plane involved in the crash was from a fleet flown by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines, with flight number 5342.
According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), this was a CRJ700 regional airliner produced by Canada’s Bombardier, not a Boeing passenger plane.
A budget question
In the same post the Weibo user claimed that “just last week, Congress rejected a proposal to upgrade the air traffic control system.” The reason, the person claimed, was that the money would be instead used to build bomb shelters at holiday villas for elected officials.
This is also false. Neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate held hearings or meetings related to budget review last week, according to publicly available schedules for the relevant committees in each chamber.
Moreover, budgets of various U.S. administrative departments are calculated based on the fiscal year, which runs from October 1 of each year to September 30 of the following year.
Generally, the President and the executive departments submit budget plans to Congress in early February each year. The committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives then hold public hearings and review the budgets. Usually this is completed by the end of June each year.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Department of Transportation’s fiscal year 2025 budget was signed and implemented by then-President Biden on September 26, 2024, involving a budget of approximately $21.8 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration. Congress also separately passed the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act 2024, giving the FAA at least $105 billion in budget to expand the recruitment of air traffic controllers and upgrade the reform of the new generation of air traffic control systems to maintain operations until fiscal year 2028.
Therefore, the statement that “the U.S. Congress has just rejected a proposal to upgrade the air traffic control system” is wrong.
Edited by Boer Deng.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.