But even before the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation—a neurotically thorough process that will probably take about a year, and thus meshes poorly with the news cycle and the conspiracy-theorist cycle—it is easy to see some of the lines of inquiry that crash detectives will pursue.

In the three years before the deadly collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight near Reagan National Airport, at least two other pilots reported near-misses with helicopters while landing at the airport,