Senators call on Congress to roll back flights at National Airport
Two U.S. senators are calling on Congress to reduce the number of daily flights at Reagan National Airport, citing new reporting by The Washington Post that detailed serious safety risks tied to the volume of traffic at the airport, including on the night of a fatal Jan. 29 collision between a regional jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter.
“While many risk factors must be reevaluated, Congress needs to start by rolling back the additional flight slots it forcibly crammed into last year’s FAA Reauthorization Act,” Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, both Virginia Democrats, said in a statement on Thursday.
The two lawmakers were referring to Congress’s decision to add 10 new daily flights at National Airport as part of a budget bill passed last year to fund the Federal Aviation Administration. The two senators were among a number of D.C.-area lawmakers who opposed the plan and raised safety concerns, noting that the new flights would pose safety risks to an already overcrowded airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board is continuing its investigation of the January collision, which killed 67 people, and has not released findings into how the airport’s busy conditions factored into the crash. In July and August, it held three days of hearings on the catastrophe, and it continues to examine multiple possible causes, including the helicopter crew’s apparent failure to see the jetliner and staffing issues in the control tower. A final report on the factors that led to the crash is expected next year.
The Post report detailed how frontline controllers repeatedly pressed their managers to reduce the number of arrivals at National, citing concerns about the volume of traffic at the airport. One such effort — in 2023 — came as Congress was considering a plan to add additional flights, which controllers strongly opposed. FAA managers turned down their request. Though a specific reason was not given, one controller testified that his manager told him that “it was not a good time to address this.”
An internal FAA review following the accident found the airport generally was in “noncompliance” when it came to ensuring adequate distances between planes lining up to land, according to a draft of the review released by the NTSB.
The FAA did not respond in detail to questions about its oversight of schedules at National. In a previous statement, it noted that hourly arrival rates have been reduced from 36 to 30 planes since the crash occurred.
The report also detailed the way in which American Airlines, the dominant carrier at National, designed its schedule contributed to the crush of traffic at the airport.
American Airlines said previously in a statement that it is the FAA’s responsibility to set an airport’s arrival rates and that it follows the agency’s scheduling rules. It said it works with FAA officials and made schedule adjustments at National this month at their request, spreading its flights more evenly using 15-minute windows.
“Air traffic controllers and pilots are only human — their workload and work environment should reflect that,” Warner and Kaine said. “Unfortunately, Congress added more flights into DCA’s already chaotic airspace just months before this tragic crash over the objections of the region’s Senate delegation and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, disregarding the concerns of numerous pilots, air traffic controllers, and FAA and DOT personnel.”
The Post reported that in the moments before the crash, the air traffic controller on duty managed the movement of 29 aircraft in 18 minutes before the collision occurred at 8:48 p.m., including a stretch of five minutes during which he choreographed six takeoffs and landings.
Since 2000, members of Congress have voted to add 64 daily flights at the airport — about 7.6 percent of National’s roughly 840 flights. Airlines also have shifted to larger planes. The combined result is an airport designed to accommodate 15 million passengers per year that now serves more than 26 million.