OPINION:
Sixty-seven lives were lost Thursday after a military helicopter collided with a regional jet preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The following day, a medevac flight plunged into a crowded Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven.
While families grieve and investigators sift through the evidence, policymakers have an obligation to address obvious safety vulnerabilities in the sky. The Potomac disaster — the first fatal crash of a U.S. commercial airliner since 2009 — could have been prevented.
The initials of America’s aviation regulator, the FAA, might as well be “Fix After Accident.” The Federal Aviation Administration has a reputation for addressing the latest mishap rather than devoting resources to stopping the next one. In his remarks on the incident, President Trump blamed the FAA’s obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion for distracting it from its core mission.
That’s not to say the personnel in the control tower last week were unqualified DEI hires — far from it. Only the best land jobs at big airports such as Reagan National. Air traffic controllers are pushed beyond reasonable limits because the FAA has failed to train enough replacements to meet demand. Shifts for this high-pressure position can be 10 hours a day, six days a week.
An ongoing lawsuit by the Mountain State Legal Foundation accuses the agency of turning away thousands of high-scoring air traffic control applicants simply because their skin color didn’t advance DEI objectives under an Obama-era program.
While overworked controllers can make mistakes, this one appears to have done his job by the book. He may not have noticed the book contained a deadly flaw. He directed an American Airlines-branded jet to land on Runway 33, where the published landing procedure skims a mere 100 feet above the route approved for helicopters, trusting the Army Black Hawk’s promise to stay out of the way.
Conflicts have happened before. A day before the accident, a Black Hawk flight veered too close for comfort to a Southwest Airlines flight. Moments later, it forced a Republic Airways jet to perform an emergency avoidance maneuver.
Military choppers are crammed into the same narrow Potomac River corridor as commercial air traffic because the powerful residents of cities such as Alexandria and Arlington throw a fit if the noisy transports fly over the city and disturb their slumber.
Much of this traffic is frivolous. Pentagon brass take “VIP” helicopter flights so they don’t have to sit in freeway traffic. In this case, the crew was on a training mission, likely using vision-restricting night-vision goggles.
Dan Driscoll, the president’s nominee for Army secretary, acknowledged change was coming in confirmation testimony last week: “I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan.”
The FAA temporarily closed Runway 33 and imposed a moratorium on nonessential helicopter flights.
That’s a good start, but Congress should also relieve the stress on the system. Authorizing a second FAA training academy can break the existing training bottleneck for air traffic controllers.
It can fund this effort by canceling wasteful projects in the FAA budget. For 2025, $71 million is devoted to the pointless search for “green” jet fuel, and $5 million is wasted on “climate goals” such as ensuring FAA executives have a charging station for their Teslas. Only $43 million is allocated for hiring new controllers.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy vowed over the weekend to restore the FAA’s safety mission. Once the agency stops wasting time searching for racist runways, it can fix vulnerabilities before the next accident occurs.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.