FAA denied request to reduce flight arrivals at Reagan Airport months before mid-air collision

Air traffic controllers concerned about safety were denied a request to decrease the number of arriving aircraft at Reagan National Airport months before the deadly mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet.

A Federal Aviation Administration official sat on the May 9, 2023, request from air traffic controllers in Warrenton, Virginia, according to an internal FAA memo made public by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The air traffic controllers, who work at Potomac Consolidated Terminal Radar Approach Control (PCT TRACON) in Warrenton, sought a decrease in the number of hourly commercial aircraft arrivals into Reagan, which operates the nation’s busiest runway and is the main airport used by Congressional lawmakers.

The PCT TRACON team cited a number of safety factors in their request, including an inability to meter arriving aircraft to maintain the required four miles of spacing between them, which resulted in difficulty managing traffic flow into Reagan.

Their request sought to cut arrivals at Reagan’s main runway from 36 to 32 incoming flights per hour.

An FAA official, who is now retired and was serving as the FAA’s Washington district general manager, resisted forwarding the request up the chain of command, according to the air traffic controllers.

The PCT TRACON team never received a formal written answer to their request. They were instead informed verbally by an unnamed official that the request would not be forwarded up the FAA management chain to avoid the wrath of House and Senate lawmakers.

Lawmakers depend on frequent flights in and out of Reagan to travel to and from their districts. At the time, they were also advancing legislation to expand the number of “slots” granted to airlines to fly in and out of Reagan.

“It’s too political,” air traffic controllers were told, according to an internal memo released in June that is part of the NTSB’s investigation into the cause of the Jan. 29, 2025, mid-air collision.

The NTSB is expected to hand down dozens of new safety recommendations when the board votes Tuesday on a final report on the probable cause of the deadly crash, just days before the first anniversary of the air disaster.

People familiar with the investigation said the report may not include a recommendation to cut back on the number of flights in and out of Reagan, which they believe played a role in the crash.

The warning from air traffic controllers about Reagan’s congested flight paths has been drowned out by other factors that contributed to the accident, chief among them the crew operating the Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.

The helicopter flew into the American Airlines flight 5342 as the plane was on final approach to the lesser-used runway 33 at the airport.

The helicopter’s pilots have been blamed for the accident.

They were wearing night-vision goggles, which limited their peripheral vision, and were flying 78 feet higher than the permitted altitude when they flew directly into the path of the jet.

The crash killed 64 passengers and crew on the jet as well as the three crew members on the Black Hawk helicopter.

On Jan. 22, one week before the first anniversary of the crash, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the department will permanently restrict helicopters operating around certain areas near the airport.

The move will not limit all helicopter activity near the airport, but it permanently closes the route taken by the Black Hawk on the night of the crash and modifies other helicopter zones and routes to keep them further away from flight paths into Reagan.

More safety changes are expected after the NTSB announces its proposed findings, probable cause and recommendations on Tuesday.

While the NTSB isn’t expected to call for reduced slots, it may recommend provisions in an aviation safety bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican.

Mr. Cruz’s legislation, now stalled in the House, does not address the growing number of slots at Reagan.

Mr. Cruz was among the chief sponsors of the 2024 legislation that added five new daily round-trip slots at the busy airport. One of the round-trip slots was provided to Texas-based American Airlines to provide non-stop service to San Antonio.

Mr. Cruz’s legislation would require technology that alerts pilots to other aircraft, including a mandate that aircraft entering busy commercial airspace be equipped with a type of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast equipment, known as ADS-B In, which provides weather and traffic positions of other planes directly to the cockpit.

The NTSB report may address the frequency of arriving aircraft at Reagan, however. Shortly after the crash, the number of arrivals was reduced to 28 per hour.

But the reduction isn’t permanent, which means eventually arrivals could return to 34 or 36 flights per hour, reviving all of the safety threats along with it.

The number of arrivals has crept up to 30 per hour currently.

According to the source familiar with the investigation, arrivals before the post-crash reduction sometimes exceeded limits, reaching as high as 50 per hour during busy periods at the airport.

The Washington Times reached out to the Transportation Department, which oversees the FAA.

The NTSB documents released in June note that Reagan’s packed arrival and departure schedules had forced air traffic controllers at Reagan to resort to “continual mitigation” to manage incoming planes.

Among the frequently used strategies to deal with congestion was offloading arrivals to runway 33, which is where the American Airlines flight 5342 was redirected to land moments before the collision.

The last-minute change forced the pilots to break off from their final approach course and circle to runway 33.

The shorter, less-frequently used runway required a more complex approach to the airport, and it put the American Airlines passenger jet directly over the corridor the Black Hawk helicopter was traveling.

At that moment, the air traffic controller in charge of the airspace at Reagan was busy.

In the 90 seconds before the fatal accident, he was managing 12 aircraft, including five helicopters.

The air traffic controller allowed the Black Hawk to continue on its route rather than holding it while the passenger jet approached. The helicopter was flying too high and may not have heard a final warning from the air traffic controller to pass behind the jet. The helicopter was traveling incognito, having silenced its ADS-B system that alerts other aircraft to its presence. The air traffic controller, however, did not follow the standard procedures requiring him to alert the passenger jet about the helicopter.

“Controllers were essentially used to, and had begun accepting as the status quo, situations and actions that were both objectively and by the book unsafe. They weren’t even recognizing unsafe situations, like the one on January 29th, because they were happening all the time,” a person familiar with the investigation said. “And they were happening all the time because there was too much traffic coming in and out of the airport.”