The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday he won’t allow operations in the airspace over the nation’s capital to revert back to the way they were before January’s deadly aircraft collision near Reagan National Airport.
Administrator Bryan Bedford told the House aviation subcommittee he won’t forget the 67 people who died when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over the Potomac River.
Bedford gave lawmakers an update on a number of key concerns about his agency during Tuesday’s hearing, including whether he believes the provisions of a major defense bill that have been widely criticized by safety experts will make flying riskier.
“It’s unfortunate, it’s beyond unfortunate, it’s tragic that the focus that we have today — the attention and our sort of unified, galvanized effort to modernize — was paid for with the lives of 67 Americans. It’s unfortunate, but that sacrifice can’t go to waste,” Bedford said. “We have to deliver for them and for the rest of the American people.”
FAA promises to maintain safety measures
Bedford promised he won’t allow the airspace to become less safe, even though critics have said the defense bill would open the door to allowing military helicopters to resume flying through the crowded airspace around Washington without broadcasting their locations.
The FAA required all aircraft to use ADS-B systems in the wake of the collision, and changed its practices to ensure that helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace and that controllers no longer rely on pilots to ensure visual separation between aircraft.
“There’s no rolling back of the safety procedures we put in place since that horrific evening,” Bedford said without taking a position on the defense bill. “Our vigilance isn’t waning.”
Senators propose legislative changes
Bedford’s testimony came as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell intensified their campaign against provisions in the massive defense bill expected to pass this week. The provisions would allow military aircraft to get a waiver to return to operating without broadcasting their precise location, just as they were before the Jan. 29 crash.
Cruz and Cantwell held a news conference Monday with some of the victims’ families to denounce the defense bill language. The senators want the provisions removed, but changing the bill would send it back to the House, potentially delaying raises for soldiers and other key provisions.
“I’m seeking a vote on the ROTOR Act as part of any appropriations measure before the current continuing resolution expires at the end of next month,” Cruz said. ROTOR stands for “Rotorcraft Operations Transparency and Oversight Reform.”
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, senators, airlines and key transportation unions all sharply criticized the new helicopter safety provisions in the defense bill when they came to light.
Cruz said the defense bill provision “was airdropped in at the last moment,” noting it would unwind actions taken by President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make the airspace around D.C. safer.
“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29th crash that claimed 67 lives,” Cruz said.
The families of the crash victims said that bill would weaken safeguards and send aviation safety backwards. Amy Hunter, who lost her cousin and his family in the crash, said Trump and his administration had worked to implement safety recommendations from the NTSB, but warned those reforms could be lost in the military policy bill.
Hunter said it “now threatens to undo everything, all the progress that was already made, and it will compromise the safety around Reagan National Airport.”
The NTSB won’t release its final report on the cause of the crash until sometime next year, but investigators have already raised a number of key concerns about the 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash and the helicopter route that allowed Black Hawks to fly dangerously close to planes landing at the airport’s secondary runway.
The bill Cruz and Cantwell proposed to require all aircraft to broadcast their locations has broad support from the White House, the FAA, NTSB and the victims’ families.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he hoped the air safety legislation Cruz and Cantwell introduced last summer, called the ROTOR Act, could be added to the funding package that the Senate may start considering this week ahead of the holiday break.
“I think we’ll get there on that, but it would be really hard to undo the defense authorization bill now,” Thune, R-S.D., said.
