WASHINGTON — U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday the Federal Aviation Administration failed to act despite dozens of near miss incidents before a fatal Jan. 29 crash between an American Airlines regional jet and Army helicopter near Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people.

“The mistake was that this was not unforeseen. We had 84 near misses in the three years before in the DC air space and no one did anything,” Duffy told reporters. “Someone was asleep at the wheel. Someone should have seen that.”

The National Transportation Safety Board disclosed in March that since 2021 there were 15,200 air separation incidents near Reagan between commercial airplanes and helicopters, including 85 close-call events.

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(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)