A bill to add more flights to Reagan National Airport is moving forward despite opposition from Virginia’s senators.
Senate and House negotiators have reached an agreement to add five more daily round-trip flights to the airport. The 1,069-page reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration will now head to the Senate floor, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation announced today (Monday).
The proposed change comes despite an analysis by the FAA itself, which reportedly found that five more round trips would result in an extra 12 hours of delays each day.
“According to the FAA, an additional 5 round trip flights will increase delays by 725 minutes per day, leading to a total of 12,734 minutes of overall daily delay at DCA,” said a Friday press release from Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-Va.) and Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen (both D-Md.).
“There is no reason to compromise the safety and timeliness of 25 million passengers for the benefit of a few members of Congress who want more flights into DCA,” the senators said.
By contrast, Capital Access Alliance — a business coalition founded last year to push for more flights at DCA — applauded the current bill as a step toward lower flight prices.
“This bipartisan compromise represents a win for air travelers who suffer from some of the highest domestic ticket prices in the country because of an outdated federal regulation that has stifled competition in the national capital region for nearly six decades,” said spokesperson Brian Walsh.
CAA has produced its own analysis arguing that the airport can support an additional 28 flights in three “underutilized time blocks.”
The news also comes after a near-collision between two commercial flights on a DCA runway earlier this month, as first reported by ARLnow. Radio traffic captured frantic transmissions from air traffic control telling pilots on both planes to stop.
The senators called this incident “a frightening and visible demonstration that DCA is at capacity.”
“Thankfully, there was no loss of life — this time,” they wrote. “But this new analysis from the FAA demonstrates conclusively once and for all that passengers simply cannot afford for Congress to further meddle in airport operations by jamming more flights onto DCA’s already-overburdened runway.”
The Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports similarly criticized the bill for possible safety impacts.
“Those who seek to add more flights to an already at-capacity and overburdened DCA jeopardize the best interest of the consumer and are ensuring more delays, congestion and cancellations for those traveling to and through our nation’s capital region,” the business coalition wrote. “The experts agree, and the facts don’t lie: DCA is at capacity and cannot accommodate any more flights.”
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has said that with 819 daily takeoffs, an airport runway is the busiest in the country.
“DCA operates at full capacity, with a takeoff or landing every minute, for much of the day,” Airports Authority President and CEO Jack Potter said last year. “Adding more flights to this already-packed schedule would lead to more delays, which would result from the need to accommodate the spacing between aircraft operations that is required to assure safety.”
Lawmakers have until May 10 to pass legislation reauthorizing the FAA.
This story has been updated with a quote from the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports.