Hello, everyone. I'm Dana Perino, along with Judge Janine Piro, Jessica Tarlov, Jesse Waters, and Greg Gutfeld.

It's 5 o'clock in New York City, and this is the 5.

We are getting brand new details on an American tragedy.

Staffing was reportedly not normal at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport

during the time of the horrific mid-air collision in which 67 people are feared dead.

We want to go to John Roberts.

He is near the crash site in Washington.

Hi, John.

Dana, good afternoon to you.

And there are new reports that there wasn't the typical complement of air traffic

controllers in the tower behind me at Reagan National Airport last night when that

faithful collision happened between the American Airlines regional jet and that Blackhawk

helicopter just outside of the landing zone of runway 33. You know, as we looked down the river,

we were remarking that there were about 15 seconds from home. And this happened. And you wonder,

how could it possibly happen? You know, there has been a chronic

shortage of air traffic controllers in this nation. Anybody who has been told, well, our flights delayed

because of air traffic control problems knows that all too well. The government has had some success

in hiring more controllers. It hired another 1,800 or so in the last year.

They were 3,000 short out of as of last May.

They've got some 3,400 in the pipeline now, I think, but don't forget, it takes between two and four years to fully train up an air traffic controller.

So the big question is, how did that Black Hawk helicopter and that CRJ 700 regional jet end up at exactly the same spot in airspace at the same time?

As you look down this river, you think, wow, there's an awful lot of sky out there.

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