Last week’s fatal aircraft collision over the Potomac River reverberates with many Arlington leaders’ longstanding concerns about the county’s crowded airspace.
In the immediate aftermath of the collision near Reagan National Airport — which claimed the lives of 64 people on a regional jet and three soldiers on a military helicopter — U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) is calling for permanent changes.
In a Friday press release, Beyer supported the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to restrict helicopter traffic around the airport as authorities await the results of an outside investigation.
Once the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completes its review, Beyer wants to end helicopter training flights like the one involved in this crash. He is urging the Department of Defense to relocate such training out of the D.C. area’s airspace — or, at minimum, keep it away from DCA.
“We are deeply concerned about this tragic collision and its broader ramifications for the National Capital Region’s airspace,” Beyer said in a letter he co-signed with 11 other U.S. representatives from the D.C. area. “We have long warned that this airspace, and particularly the area immediately surrounding National, is overcrowded and above recommended capacity.”
Beyer, along with Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-Va.), opposed a measure last year to add five more daily round-trip flights to DCA. All three officials were on the losing end of landslide votes in both the House and the Senate, where the measure passed 387-26 and 88-4.
With a preliminary NTSB report not expected for several weeks, Arlington’s federal representatives have ventured few opinions on what factors may have contributed to last week’s crash.
However, local advocates’ concerns about the number of flights at DCA stretch back years.
Historically, their arguments have tended to focus on a combination of noise complaints and safety concerns. But last week’s tragedy — which followed two close calls on the airport’s tarmac last spring — has added a new depth of significance to ongoing local debates about the nation’s busiest runway.
“The addition of more and more flights by Congress to Reagan National is clearly an air-safety disaster no longer waiting to happen,” wrote Joseph Pelton, chair of the Arlington Civic Federation’s Airport Noise Subcommittee, in a recent email. “The two near-misses in [spring] 2024 should have been the trigger to increasing air safety at Reagan National, but no meaningful reforms were enacted.”
Cautious response from lawmakers
Beyond the push for helicopter restrictions, Arlington’s representatives in the U.S. House and Senate have been relatively quiet on calls to action immediately after the crash.
In years past, however, they haven’t been shy to criticize the federal government’s handling of Reagan National. Beyer has long championed Arlington residents’ grievances about airplane noise, while Warner and Kaine were among the most outspoken critics of the push for more flights.
Last year, the senators spotlighted two incidents of planes coming close to colliding on the airport’s runway, prompting a rapid response from air traffic controllers.
In a joint statement, the senators called the first incident “a frightening and visible demonstration that DCA is at capacity” — pointing to an FAA analysis that found that adding flights would significantly increase airport delays.
“Thankfully, there was no loss of life — this time,” they wrote in April 2024. “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.”
Warner and Kaine called the second near-miss in May “further evidence that the airport is severely overburdened and at capacity.”
Warner’s office declined to comment on this story, citing the pending NTSB report. Kaine’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyer, meanwhile, acknowledged his own past warnings about “safety implications of excessive air traffic in the region.” He also has concerns about air traffic controller understaffing both locally and nationally, “but again, it is too early to say what role that may have played here.”
“As we make long term decisions, our foremost priority must be safe and efficient operations at DCA and preventing a tragedy like this one from ever happening again,” the congressman said. “This is going to take time and likely involve many components, but I will be closely focused on working with federal, state, and local partners to make sure we get this right.”
Local advocates push for change
While Arlington’s federal officials are holding off on strong stances, other longtime critics see last week’s crash as the latest — and most horrific — example of issues they have been raising for years.
Former U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, who fought against a push to permanently close the airport after 9/11, believes it is well past time to consider shifting some flights from National to Dulles.
As it stands now, “there’s not enough room in the sky [around National] for those flights to operate safely,” said Moran, who served in Congress from 1995 to 2015.
While “Dulles could handle almost twice as many [flights],” he told ARLnow that National should be handling “about two-thirds” of its current totals.
Nevertheless, Moran is dubious that members of Congress from outside the D.C. area will spring for such a shift in operations.
“Their intent is making their flights as convenient as possible,” he said. “They don’t want to travel that extra half-hour.”
Other civic advocates insist that current safety risks are unacceptable.
As recently as last fall, the Arlington County Civic Federation was considering a possible resolution urging officials to limit the number of flights at National. The draft document, titled “a resolution on airport safety and noise,” follows a long line of complaints about the airport’s effects on Arlington residents.
Pelton, who introduced the draft resolution, believes it may be time to go back to the drawing board with a more aggressive proposal.
In an email to members of the Arlington County Quiet Skies Coalition and others, he argued that federal oversight “is a fundamental flaw that impedes any effort to increase the safety of its operation and a migratory plan to shut it down over a period of years.”
Stephen Geiger, co-chair of the Quiet Skies Coalition, argued that government leaders at all levels, as well the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, are aware that the airport “is beyond a sustainable safe capacity.”
“[The D.C. region] has two other airports with much larger capacities for aircraft,” the group said in a statement. “Each of those airports is accessible by multiple modes of transit. A reduction of capacity at DCA to safe levels would not deprive anyone of the ability to access an airport.”
Kate Bates, president of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, noted the significance of the airport to Arlington’s economy — but also said her organization is “devastated” by a loss that “hits home for the members of our business community, personally and professionally.”
While the Chamber likely won’t directly shape any future changes at the airport, it is in partnership with people who will.
“We have confidence in our partners — including the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and federal, state and local authorities — and will continue to engage in conversations on behalf of the Arlington business community regarding DCA and its key role in Arlington’s future,” Bates told ARLnow.
Past Arlington plane crashes
Last week’s collision was the first commercial plane crash in the United States in almost 16 years. However, it wasn’t without precedent at Reagan National.
For some, the collision evoked memories of the 1982 Air Florida disaster, which killed 74 of 79 on board and four more when the aircraft struck vehicles on the 14th Street Bridge.
But more than 30 years before that air disaster, there was a crash at National with even more similar parallels to the Jan. 29 incident.
On Nov. 1, 1949, all 55 people aboard an Eastern Air Lines DC-4 aircraft died after a midair collision with a Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft being test-flown by a Bolivian Air Force officer on an acceptance flight.
The event occurred at about 300 feet above the ground, immediately southwest of the airport. According to investigators, the pilot of the Eastern aircraft saw the P-38 approaching, but was unable to maneuver and avoid the collision.
The DC-4 crashed into a shallow portion of the Potomac after the collision. Arlington volunteer firefighters were among the first responders.
The Civil Aeronautics Board, which at the time was the federal investigating agency for aircraft incidents, laid most of the blame on the Bolivian pilot — who survived — with some ancillary responsibility put on air-traffic controllers and the Eastern air crew.
It was, at the time, the deadliest airline crash in U.S. history. Among the dead were both a current and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
That crash spurred Congress to act on a stalled bill calling for a second airport for the Washington area. This would become Washington Dulles International Airport, which opened in 1962.
Five weeks after the November 1949 mid-air collision, on Dec. 12, a Capital Airlines DC-3 arriving from Memphis via Newport News crashed into the Potomac on its approach to National. Two of three crew and four of 20 passengers were killed.
