The National Transportation Safety Board is “urgently” recommending that the Federal Aviation Administration “permanently” prohibit helicopter air traffic during certain times around Ronald Reagan National Airport in response to January’s midair collision involving a passenger jet and military helicopter.
Echoing similar orders from Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy following the collision, the Safety Board is recommending that helicopter operations cease “when certain runways are in use for arrivals or departures,” underscoring it as “an intolerable risk to aviation safety by increasing the chance of a midair collision.”
In addition, the Safety Board is asking the FAA to prohibit helicopter operations near the airport when runways 15 and 33 are in use, recommending designating an alternate route for helicopters. Runways 15 and 33 use the same stretch of runway, with 15 used for flights arriving and departing from the north and 33 used for flights arriving and departing from the south.
It was runway 33 that was designated to be used for the American Airlines flight en route from Wichita on the evening of Jan. 29. It collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, killing 67 people.
The 10-page “urgent recommendation report” said “helicopters transiting the Route 4 helicopter corridor at the maximum authorized altitude of 200 feet could have only about 75 feet of vertical separation from an airplane on landing approach to Runway 33.”
“The lack of separation was insufficient,” and “vertical separation could potentially be less than 75 feet depending on the helicopter’s lateral distance from the Potomac River shoreline or if an approaching airplane was below the designated visual glidepath to Runway 33,” according to the report.
The Safety Board reports that the chopper was flying above the 200-foot permitted flight ceiling at the time of the collision for helicopters flying near DCA.
According to the NTSB Aviation Investigation Preliminary Report, the flight data recorder for the American Airlines jet “indicated that the airplane’s last recorded radio altitude was 313 ft, 2 seconds before the collision. The airplane’s pitch at the time of the collision was 9º nose up and roll was 11º left wing down. The airplane was descending at 448 ft per minute.”
“The PAT25 FDR [helicopter] indicated that the radio altitude of the helicopter at the time of the collision was 278 ft,” the report added
The ceiling is designed to keep military and law enforcement helicopters clear of commercial aircraft landing and taking off in the already tightly restricted airspace around the nation’s capital.
In addition, the NTSB also noted that before the collision, the chopper had turned off its Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast system, a vital tracking system.
The Federal Aviation Administration describes the system as “advanced surveillance technology that combines an aircraft’s positioning source, aircraft avionics, and ground infrastructure to create an accurate surveillance interface between aircraft” and air traffic control.
The air traffic in and around DCA has been up for debate for years.
The Center Square has previously reported on the decades-old perimeter rule limiting the number of nonstop flights to 1,250 miles from the airport; however, the government has granted several exceptions over the years – including the daily nonstop flights from Wichita. According to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, 40 flights meet the exception.
According to the most recent report from the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority, Reagan National and Dulles International each served more than 26 million passengers in the 12 months ending in November. Combined, the number is 53.1 million. For reference, Dulles has 113 gates, with DCA having over half the number of gates at 58.
The authority and Virginia’s U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner have opposed expanding the perimeter rule, citing congestion, delays and safety concerns—even prior to the collision.
“Because of the short length of its runways, over 90 percent of DCA’s flights use its main runway, making it the busiest runway in America with over 800 daily takeoffs and landings, which is a takeoff or landing every minute during most of the day. Making the nation’s busiest runway even busier is a bad idea,” according to the authority.
