Months before last night’s fatal aircraft collision, lawmakers dismissed safety warnings and approved an airline-backed measure that increased flight traffic at Washington, DC’s already overstressed airport — the site of the disaster.
Months before Wednesday night’s fatal midair collision of an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter in Washington, lawmakers brushed off safety warnings amid midflight near-misses and passed an industry-backed measure designed to add additional flight traffic at the same DC airport where the January 29 disaster unfolded.
Soon after a March 2023 near collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, House lawmakers considered a provision to increase the number of flights allowed at the facility. It is one of only two airports in the country owned by the federal government, giving Congress unique authority over its operations.
The legislation was supported by lawmakers seeking more direct flights to their home states and airlines eager for expanded routes. It was opposed by lawmakers who asserted that the airport was already overstressed by flight volume in the capital region’s busy airspace.
“The bill just proposed would go far beyond past attempts to expand slots at [the Reagan Airport], dangerously overloading the airport’s operational capacity to benefit one airline,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told the Washington Post at the time. “The very title of the ‘Direct Access to the Capital Act’ gives the game away that this bill is written to maximize the personal convenience of a comparatively small number of powerful, well-connected individuals at the expense of safety and efficiency of flights — which should be our top priority.”
The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), insisted: “Deliberate misinformation has been circulating wildly among my colleagues, and I want to be clear: Our effort is not about benefiting one airport, one airline, or any one member of Congress. It is about empowering American consumers by providing more options and greater convenience for people traveling to and from Washington, D.C.”
Among Owens’s top contributors is the corporate political action committee of Delta Air Lines, which pressed for the measure. Delta’s political action committee was also among the top contributors to the bill’s cosponsor, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). Delta spent more than $3.8 million lobbying Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Transportation Department, and other regulators on the Reagan Airport expansion and other issues in 2023 alone.
The measure was narrowly voted down. However, less than a year later, a similar provision was added to a 2024 Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill. The measure prompted new warnings from lawmakers concerned that the airport near the US capital was already overstressed and additional flights could create dangerous conditions.
“Yesterday, [the Reagan Airport] experienced a close call as two planes narrowly avoided a collision. This incident echoes a similar incident in March 2023 where two planes almost collided on DCA’s runway,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) in April 2024 as the bill was being finalized. “These near-misses underscore the critical need to safeguard the airport from additional flight operations. The safety of the public should be of the utmost concern in the [Federal Aviation Administration] bill, and increasing slots at this airport undermines that safety.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) aired a similar warning.
“The near-miss crash at DCA yesterday is yet another example of why we can’t keep cramming more flights to this airport,” Kaine tweeted at the time. “I’ve been warning about this for years — the system is overwhelmed and it’s a threat to public safety.”
The expansion provision was also opposed by a group of lawmakers who said that Reagan Airport is among the busiest in the country and warned against additional flights.
“The House rejected this measure with a bipartisan vote, and its authors were so sure they would lose a floor vote in the Senate that they barred all amendments, including a proposal to ensure the added flights were not dangerous,” a group of House lawmakers from the region wrote at the time. “In a shameful moment for the Senate, the majority will of both chambers was overruled in a backroom deal that put special interests above the safety and convenience of millions of Americans.”
They added: “Every federal and regional entity involved in operations at [the Reagan Airport] warns of negative impacts for safety, delays, and cancellations from these changes. Ignoring these warnings is foolish and dangerous. We strenuously object to added traffic at [the Reagan Airport], which is already dramatically over capacity.”
President Joe Biden signed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill into law in May 2024. The Transportation Department began awarding new slots this past December.
The flight expansion was supported by Delta Air Lines and the Capital Access Alliance, a business group that includes Delta dedicated to adding additional flights to the Reagan Airport in DC. A 2023 op-ed by alliance board members asserted that “next generation programs have been implemented, increasing air traffic safety at the airport.”
American, Alaska, and United Airlines opposed expanding flights at the airport.
The slot expansion was the latest in a string of such increases. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reported that “As part of FAA reauthorization legislation in 2000, 2003, and 2012, Congress collectively granted 40 beyond-perimeter daily slots at DCA.”
President Donald Trump’s new Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, voted for the 2012 expansion while serving in the US House.
The recently increased flights at Reagan Airport come amid a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers. A 2023 Transportation Department report found that staffing levels for air traffic controllers declined by 10 percent from 2013 to 2023 and that the Federal Aviation Administration “continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them.”
In May 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration estimated that it still needed to hire roughly 3,000 more air traffic controllers nationwide to meet demands. Nevertheless, air traffic controllers were among the federal employees who received an email this week from the Office of Personnel Management giving them the option to resign but be paid through the end of September.
On the evening of January 29, an American Airlines regional jet arriving at Reagan Airport from Wichita, Kansas, collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River. As of publication, officials believed that there were no survivors among the plane’s sixty passengers and four crew members. The New York Times reported that twenty-eight bodies had been recovered from the river, and John Donnelly, Washington’s fire chief, said emergency responders would switch from a rescue to a recovery operation.
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