He lost his wife and son in the DC plane crash. Now, he wants to see change.

USA Today

08-03-2025

He lost his wife and son in the DC plane crash. Now, he wants to see change. Doug Lane wants the institutions that were supposed to protect his family, like the Federal Aviation Administration, held accountable.
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Doug Lane talks about his son, DC plane crash victim Spencer Lane
Doug Lane, a Barrington resident, lost his wife Christine Conrad Lane and son Spencer Lane in a plane crash on Jan. 29.
Christine and Spencer Lane died in a plane crash in the Potomac River.
Spencer Lane was a talented 16-year-old figure skater who trained at the Skating Club of Boston.
Christine Lane was a devoted mother and creative quilter.
Doug Lane, Christine's husband and Spencer's father, believes the crash was preventable.
He is now advocating for changes to air traffic control systems to prevent future tragedies.
Waiting at home in Barrington, Rhode Island, Doug Lane checked the flight tracker again.
American Airlines flight 5342 landed 10 minutes ago, it insisted. His wife, Christine Conrad Lane, and eldest son, Spencer Lane, should be at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where they'd catch their connecting flight back home.
So why was the Find My Friend app telling him that Christine was still in Wichita, Kansas, and Spencer was in some other state?
Twenty minutes. Even if they were stuck on the tarmac, Spencer, a startlingly talented 16-year-old figure skater with a prolific social media presence, would have turned on his phone.
Doug pulled up CNN's website, looking for a distraction. Instead, he saw a series of words that took his breath away: Plane crash, Potomac River.
'My heart was beating out of my chest," he recalled in an interview with the USA TODAY Network this week.
Just before 9 p.m. on Jan. 29, a passenger jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. Even before he knew the details, Doug connected the dots. It was Christine and Spencer's plane. There weren't any survivors.
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Doug and Christine met on a fall day in Boston in 1999 while watching the Head of the Charles regatta, a rowing competition held annually on the Charles River, with friends. He remembers seeing her on the dock, with her irresistible smile and chunky black boots, and thinking she was cute.
Christine, who grew up in New Jersey, had recently moved to Boston to work as a graphic designer at an advertising agency. They went on one date – dinner in the North End – but it wasn't until a year later that she agreed to another.
At the time, Doug was laser-focused on his career and content to "waste the weekend away" after working long hours during the week. Christine was the opposite: She'd bounce out of bed, asking him, "What are we doing today?" and filled her spare time with creative pursuits like sewing, knitting and photography.
"Eventually, I started to like it and realize, oh, this is how you find your passions," Doug said. "You go out and you try things, and you experience life outside of work."
When the couple got engaged, Christine spent hours making intricate wedding invitations by hand. A lifelong animal lover, she was eager to get a dog, but Doug suggested waiting until after the honeymoon. She held him to his word, scheduling the appointment the day they returned.
"We're on our honeymoon in this lovely boutique hotel in Napa Valley," he recalled. "And she's on the bed with her laptop, looking at greyhounds for adoption."
The couple also wanted children, but pregnancy for Christine was considered "high risk": As a student at Syracuse University, she'd had "pretty intensive surgery" to remove a brain tumor, Doug said. Adopting Spencer from South Korea in 2009, followed by Milo in 2014, was an easy choice.
By then, the Lanes had moved to Westport, Massachusetts. They "enthusiastically – if sometimes clumsily – embraced Korean culture," Doug wrote in Spencer's obituary. That including keeping Spencer's Korean name, Seojin, as his middle name, but constantly struggling to pronounce it.
While waiting for Milo to come home, Christine decided to make him a quilt, she later said in a video posted to her YouTube channel, Quilting on Caffeine. Soon, she had a new passion: making colorful quilts with modern designs.
"Her creativity just took off," said Doug.
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One of Doug's favorite photos of Spencer was taken when he was 3 years old. He's on a bright green training bike, but he's not riding it. He's standing atop its tiny seat, smiling down from his precarious perch.
"That's just how he was," Doug said. "He had these crazy athletic abilities, but zero interest in traditional sports."
The Lanes moved to Barrington, Rhode Island, in 2018, drawn in part by the strong public school system. As the 2022 Winter Olympics approached, 13-year-old Spencer became fascinated with figure skating.
In just two years, he went from taking his first lessons to training at the prestigious Skating Club of Boston full-time, outshining peers who'd been skating for years. He amassed thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram and got recognized at far-flung rinks.
"His progress was so uncommon that people just were really captivated by it," Doug said.
Spencer dreamed of joining U.S. Figure Skating's national development team, which is composed of potential prospects for Team USA. From there, he could potentially even make it to the Olympics.
He enrolled in an online high school program so that he could spend five days a week at the Skating Club of Boston's state-of-the-art facility, typically arriving around 8:30 a.m. and leaving around 3 p.m.
"He was very intense, and he never wanted to take a day off," Doug said.
Spencer's world-class training wasn't cheap, but the Lanes were willing to make sacrifices to invest in his talent. Christine, who'd stepped away from graphic design to be a "full-time mom," got her real estate license so she could help, Doug said.
In November, Spencer achieved his dream: qualifying for the National Development Team. U.S. Figure Skating invited him to train at an elite development camp. It would take place in Wichita in January.
Grieving husband and father wants to fix broken systems
Until he got to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Doug said, there was a small part of him that still thought he might eventually wake up and realize he'd been having a horrible nightmare.
"This is not something you ever even think about," he said. "You think about, 'What happens if my wife or child gets in a car accident?' or 'What if somebody gets sick?' This is beyond anything I ever even thought to worry about."
The investigation into the crash is still ongoing, but in his view, it's already "pretty obvious" that it could have been prevented.
He's not angry at the pilots who were flying the plane, or the U.S. Army helicopter that collided with it, he said. He has only empathy for the air traffic controllers who were working that day.
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He blames the "antiquated and ill-thought-out system of air traffic control and sharing of airspace between military and commercial aircraft," not specific individuals. And he wants the institutions that were supposed to protect his family, like the Federal Aviation Administration, held accountable.
Fixing the system that broke down that day, Doug believes, would be one form of justice.
"It's pretty apparent that changes need to be made," he said.
Back home, he's doing his best to adapt to life as a single father. Milo, a seventh-grader at Barrington Middle School, has proven surprisingly resilient. Doug copes with his own grief by throwing himself into projects, as Christine had taught him.
"I've been just trying to keep busy, and as long as I'm busy, I'm OK," he said. "When you get home late at night and things settle down, I think that's when it's hardest for both of us. Especially because you can feel the people that are missing from the house."