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By Colleen Mondor

May 19, 2025, © Leeham News: On March 27, acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau testified before the US Senate Commerce Committee on the continued fallout from the Jan. 29 midair collision near Reagan National Airport in Washington (DC) between an American Eagle Airlines CRJ-700 and a US Army helicopter. All aboard both craft died.

In response to repeated questions from several senators about how warning signs about the congested airspace were missed, Rocheleau admitted that the agency needed to be more proactive about future safety issues, saying, “We have to identify trends, we have to get smarter about how we use data, and when we put corrective actions in place, we must execute them.”

FAA history of trend analysis

The FAA has collected safety information on National Airspace System users for decades. While the earliest data contained incident and accident reports drawn from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the agency’s Aviation Incident Data System and the Service Difficulty Reporting System were created in 1978. By the early 1980s, they were stored in the FAA’s “System 2000,” where eventually they were converted into usable formats and transmitted to FAA employees. It was cumbersome, time-consuming, and not entirely accessible. But it was a start, and by 1988, as listed in the following table from the Office of Technology Assessment, several other databases had been established.

*Earliest year for data stored electronically. RSPA = Research and Special Programs Administration. “Incident” in this database does not always refer to NTSB-determined incidents. Other agencies sometimes use the term for any manner of non-accident events.