‘Something was missed’ at Reagan National Airport. What experts have to say about one of the country’s busiest airports
When senators grilled the Federal Aviation Administration last week about how the agency could have let the high number of close calls between helicopters and commercial jetliners occur at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the acting head of the FAA replied, “Something was missed.” That thought came “too little, too late,” according to Dailey Crafton, who was in attendance. In January, his brother was among 67 people killed when an American Airlines regional jet landing at the airport collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. The NTSB later uncovered 15,214 “near miss events” at the airport between 2021 and 2024, where aircraft were within one nautical mile of each other, with a vertical separation of less than 400 feet. There were also 85 cases where aircraft were much closer - less than 1,500 feet apart, with a vertical separation of less than 200 feet, according to the NTSB. “There were a number of reports that came in, and we investigate every single near midair collision,” said Chris Rocheleau, acting FAA administrator in the hearing on the collision. “We have teams that go out and assess the airspace itself.” The “overburdened” Reagan National Airport, which sits on a total of 860 acres, has long been one of the nation’s busiest airports, according to the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports. It served 25.5m passengers in 2023, more than its much larger counterpart Dulles International Airport, which served 25.1m. Reagan National Airport’s main runway is the busiest runway in the country, with over 800 daily takeoffs and landings, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority. The airport has 58 total gates and three runways.
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