An engraving of Icarus, a figure in Greek mythology who falls to his death after his man-made wings disintegrate in the sun.

The Sky’s the Limit

From the Wright brothers’ near-fatal crashes to this year’s midair collision over the Potomac, failure has always been the cost of progress in aviation

By David Rooney

On January 29, 2025, a midair collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter over Washington, D.C., stunned a city that trusted in tightly controlled skies. The crash, which killed 67 people and grounded flights across the region, reopened debates about airspace safety. As with every aviation tragedy, two key questions emerged: What went wrong? And what can we learn?

From the Wright brothers’ first flight, in 1903, to the rise of commercial aviation in the 1920s and 1930s, the sky became a laboratory. Pilots were the test subjects. Engineering was often informed guesswork. As the Wrights once described their strategy with glider experiments: “Escape accident long enough to acquire skill sufficient to prevent accident.”