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A high-profile bill intended to close some of the air safety gaps highlighted by a fatal collision over Washington, D.C., last year failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.
The ROTOR Act did not garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass under a special fast-track procedure. The final vote was 264-133, according to The Hill.
The vote marks a surprising reversal for a piece of bipartisan legislation that, up until recently, seemed set to become law. The ROTOR Act passed the Senate unanimously last year and had the backing of Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz, National Transportation Safety Board leader Jennifer Homendy, and families of those killed in the 2025 collision, in addition to airline labor unions.
The bill would have required civilian and military aircraft operators to install and use ADS-B navigation technology. Only in narrowly defined situations pertaining to national security would military aircrews be able to switch the system off, obscuring their location from other aircraft.
The act would also have ordered studies of the Army’s compliance with FAA flight planning and the airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (KDCA). The American jet was preparing to land at Reagan National at the time of crash.
Support for the Rotorcraft Operations Transparency and Oversight Reform (ROTOR) Act on Capitol Hill appeared to build with the one-year anniversary of the crash on January 29 and subsequent NTSB hearings into the causes of the disaster. Earlier this month, however, a group of House Republicans advanced their own legislation, the ALERT Act, which they said is more strongly grounded in the recommendations made by the NTSB in its final report. The act makes fewer demands on aircraft operators, including the military, and does not require the universal adoption of ADS-B.
Two supporters of the ALERT Act, House Transportation Chair Sam Graves and Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers, said on the House floor this week that they believe the ROTOR Act is flawed. They did not plan to marshal votes against the bill, however, The Hill reported.
In another blow, the U.S. Defense Department came out against the ROTOR Act in a short statement on Monday. The Pentagon said the bill “would create significant unresolved budgetary burdens and operational security risks affecting national defense activities.”
Some House Republicans took a similar line, arguing that ADS-B mandates could allow adversaries to monitor and track U.S. military aircraft.
According to Politico, House Republican leaders privately told members that they could let the legislation fail in order to address problems with it.
Backers of the ROTOR Act, including the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and victim’s families, have criticized the Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency (ALERT) Act for, in their view, not going far enough to resolve safety concerns.
In a memo released early Tuesday, the families reiterated their support for the ROTOR Act and said it already addresses concerns about national security raised by Republican detractors. They also highlighted the advantages of ADS-B over TCAS II, the collision avoidance system championed by the ALERT Act.
“[The ROTOR Act] is the only bill that ensures collision avoidance technology is installed and operational—not studied, not recommended, not deferred to the agencies whose failures caused this crash,” the families said.
