Wednesday night’s collision between an American Eagle regional jet landing at Washington’s National airport and a Black Hawk helicopter was absolutely devastating. A lot of information is coming out quickly about what happened.
A new clearer video has been released of the collision between a helicopter and passenger plane in Washington D.C. pic.twitter.com/lxzKax7TUN
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 31, 2025
There’s quite a bit of chatter about restricting use of National airport because “there’s just not enough room” for all of the flights there. That just isn’t true.
- Flights simply haven’t grown materially in and out of the airport over the past two decades. The only increases have come from a handful of new takeoff and landing slots, most recently 5 new trips created by the FAA Reauthorization Act that hadn’t gone into service yet.
- Before 9/11, 10% of the airports slots were reserved for general aviation use. However there’s very little private flight traffic because of strict security rules (like TSA approval, having trained security on board the aircraft). There are days without any private traffic at all.
There are certainly restrictions on corridors in which commercial aircraft are permitted to fly, because they’re flying alongside Washington, D.C. which is home to buildings that the government wants to protect. For a time after 9/11, passengers weren’t allowed to get up to use the lavatory within 30 minutes of takeoff or landing on DCA flights. Deviation from approved flight paths can force a diversion to Dulles airport, or a fighter jet escort.
It’s still a busy airport, to be sure. But what’s grown is military flying around the airport, like the Black Hawk that appears to have been above its authorized flight level and that may have fixed visually on the wrong aircraft after acknowledging instructions from air traffic control. We’ll wait for more details before determining an actual cause of the disaster.
Much of this military traffic may be unnecessary, and certainly unnecessary in the vicinity of the airport. After 9/11, the military has been given a lot of priority but it’s not all for specific missions that combat real threats.
Against this backdrop, the FAA has shut down helicopters flying at low altitude near the glide path for planes landing at Washington’s National airport. That makes a lot of sense.
BREAKING: The FAA tells me it has indefinitely SHUT DOWN the low-altitude helicopter corridor in use during Wednesday's fatal midair collision.
Blackhawk was on Route 4. It and Route 1 are now both closed "inside the bridges." Most significant action yet by FAA. pic.twitter.com/PAyXUdqWMy
— Pete Muntean (@petemuntean) January 31, 2025
We’re going to learn a lot more about the specific causes of this incident, as we do in the case of other aviation disasters. Air travel is exceptionally safe because of the excruciating attention to detail. Most of the low hanging fruit for safety has been picked a long time ago, and accidents now tend to be where there’s a confluence of long tail events that haven’t been seen before. They’re novel. We learn about new threats and address them so that they don’t repeat.
And because this aviation safety becomes focal, and a number of hypotheses about the incident will be chased down, we’ll likely uncover other vulnerabilities as well. There may be a spotlight shown on areas for improvement that aren’t directly responsible for the crash. I worry that too much emphasis on DEI and on air traffic controller funding will distract from technology modernization (in some ways the FAA’s air traffic organization is decades behind Canada’s, for instance) and procurement procedures (where timelines and cost get blown out because we develop custom specs to meet everyone’s preferences rather than licensing new and better systems off the shelf).
Mitch, Lindsay, Grassley, their colleagues and lobbyists all need to stop requiring enough flights to suit their personal needs, disregarding safety.
Also, could never understand why an airport was named after B-list actor Reagan, after he caused the elimination of so many air traffic controllers.
It really takes the death of more than 60 people to figure out that they shouldn’t be flying military helicopters around a civilian airport?
DCA isn’t going anywhere because IAD and BWI aren’t suitable alternatives. You might as well try to close LGA. It’s not there just for politicians.
Helicopters flying that close to an airport and in the path of commercial planes 1-2 minutes from landing doesn’t seem to make common sense to me but I’d leave that up to experts not keyboard warriors.
Since Reagan is bad, the closure of the airport might be good…unless they revert back to the Washington National name.
Since Washington is full of politics, the fate of Washington National and Dallas Love should be linked. Washington National’s flights get slashed using safety as an excuse but they are allowed more flights if Dallas Love is allowed to have 40 gates, up from 20. At one time, Dallas Love had 70 gates. They have the land to have 40 gates.
It would help a whole lot if there were more people working ATC, but in 2019 Sean Duffy voted in Congress against increasing funding to the FAA for ATC purposes too. And going back to the 1980s, the Republicans have long taken an issue with “overpaid” and “too many” air traffic controllers, and that spirit of Reagan lives deep in the heart of both RINO MAGAts and in traditional, non-MAGA Republicans.
I have experienced no massive increase in flights at DCA during the last 20 years. There has been an increase in military helicopters flying along/across the Potomac River during the last 20-25 years, but not of fixed wing commercial flights during the last 20-25 years.
Is it true that the DOD VIP helicopter in the crash had come in from a Saudi Embassy-owned home in McLean on Lawton Street? Saw something about it having been close to that house in McLean but no one from that neighborhood has put out area camera feed of the landing or take-off that I have come across.
Passenger demand for commercial flights to and/from DCA has very little to do with federal legislators and way more to do with the massive economic engine that is the DC metropolitan area and the human capital that is in the capital area. That economic engine and demand is very much so a product of the federal government and federal government spending but the idea that DCA lives because of Congresspersons wanting a convenient airport for themselves just doesn’t fly on the basis of fact.
They even shut down DCA after 9/11. Then the pressure to reopen was from the legislators but not only. Nowadays, the demand for having it operating with commercial flights is even more extensive in scale and scope than in 2001.
The FAA is really on top of their game. Imagine recognizing they need to keep traffic out of an active incoming flight path. SMH
Seems like a good idea …
*gestures broadly*
The deranged Orange Blob’s blathering aside, there were two main causes of this crash: serious understaffing in the tower- two ATCs instead of the four billeted- and the absurd decision to allows helicopters of any kind to fly anywhere bear a major airport’s landing path.
Period.
I guess we still need to learn things that should be obvious, the hard and painful way. What an outrage. What a waste.
Bill,
atc staffing might have been an issue but unless and until there is evidence that what ATC did was not sufficient to have done their part, then it is the helicopter’s error that is the cause of the error.
since the FAA made the decision – superseding the dept. of defense – that helicopter flights have to cease at least for now, it is pretty clear where the problem was and that the old past can’t return to normal until better processes and automation are put in place to allow civilian airliners and military aircraft to be in the same space.
as for those that advocate lower flight frequencies or even closing DCA to passenger traffic, DC exists as the people’s city. Turning it into a domain in which the military is free to roam but civilians are not is not going to happen.
The military has to figure out how to operate in close proximity and under the same set of rules, communication and technology that civilian aircraft use at DCA and DC overall