Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has the busiest runaway in the US, with an average of 819 takeoffs per day – which experts say likely contributed to Wednesday’s air disaster.
The airport – also known as DCA – also has two other runways, launching 62 flights an hour, according to a 2023 report by the Alexandria Times.
It is in proximity to two other airports, including international Washington Dulles, and various military bases which also launch large volumes of aircraft, making for crowded airspace where precision is key.
“DCA is one of the most demanding airports in the world. It also has what’s known as ‘helicopter alley’ with hundreds of police, military, news and rescue helicopters criss-crossing the Potomac River – it’s crazy out there,” Captain Ross “Rusty” Aimer, a retired United Airlines pilot and aviation expert, told The Post.
Wednesday’s collision between a military helicopter with three soldiers aboard and a commercial jet carrying 64 people coming in to land resulted in the death of all.
An initial Federal Airlines Authority report said one air traffic controller was doing two people’s job at the time – handling both the helicopter traffic and plane landings.
Staffing was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report, seen by the New York Times, admitted. They had only 19 fully certified controllers in September 2023, which is a third lower than the target set by the FAA.
“DC airspace is very unique,” Henry Harteveldt, President and travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, told The Post, citing the proximity of the military operations and the outdated design of the airport.
“Reagan National was built in the 1930s as the original airport in DC … commercial and military aircraft share the airspace … We’ve been lucky to have never before had an incident like this happen,” he added.
In May 2024 there was nearly a collision between an American Airlines jet and a small airplane at DCA and there was another almost bang-up in April 2024 between Southwest and JetBlue airplanes.
Harteveldt attributes that partly to the fact Reagan “has runway configurations that are no longer used at contemporary airports. We’ve got runways that intersect with one another.”
The precarious situation is exacerbated due to the fact that the airport’s main runway is half the length of the standard — 7,000 feet instead of 13,000 — resulting in the compact scheduling for takeoffs and landings.
Despite this, in 2024 congress allowed the airport to increase its number of daily flights from DCA.
“Two months ago, I spent time in the air traffic control tower at DCA,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told the Alexandria Times in August 2023. “Every 30-60 seconds, a flight was taking off or landing. I saw firsthand how short and busy the runway is with no room for expansion.
“DCA was designed to accommodate the traffic of 14 million people a year. Last year, 25 million passengers came through DCA.”
In the 2023 analysis of busiest runways, the second most trafficked after Ronald Reagan Washington’s primary runway was one at Los Angeles International airport, which had an average of 781 flights per day – but that runway is twice as long.
Add in DC’s government buildings, a military-aviation insider told The Post, and “every element that makes aviation complicated is combined and compounded right there.”
Commercial flights with pre-planned destinations and landing slots are much easier to manage than military flights, like the Black Hawk army helicopter which was flying south along the Potomac on a training flight.
“Their mission might have a complicated communications protocol,” said the insider. “They may have been be training for night vision or else doing some kind of a tactical mission.”
The insider also said airborne mishaps involving military flights are more common than most people think, but tend to be hushed up. “I don’t think people realize how often there are military crashes,” he said. “[The helicopter that went down in DC] is not the first military aircraft to crash [even] this week.”
Near misses have become more common in recent years, with 503 ‘significant’ air traffic control lapses recorded in financial year 2023, according to FAA data, which was a year-on-year increase of 65%.
A Delta and American Airlines flight almost collided at New York’s JFK airport in January 2023, followed by a FedEx plane coming within 100 feet of a Southwest plane which was trying to take off in Austin a month later. Those incidents prompted the FAA to open an audit into runway incursion risks at the 45 busiest US airports. The results of that report are yet to be published.
However, the aviation experts told the Post they felt error was more likely on the helicopter pilots’ side.
“I think it’s highly probable the American Airlines regional jet was exactly where the plane was supposed to be,” Christine Negroni, an air safety specialist and author of the bestselling “The Crash Detective,” told The Post. “It was a final approach. It was at between 200 and 300 feet. It was where it needed to be. In that case, the onus is on every other thing flying to not be there.”
Harteveldt also mentioned air traffic controllers putting in overtime and working six day weeks. “We have a shortage of air traffic controllers,” he said, noting those in DC rank among the best in the business.
On Thursday President Trump maintained Pete Buttigieg, who served as transportation secretary under former President Biden, drove his department “into the ground with his diversity” – a remark Buttigieg called “despicable,” Aimer thinks human error in a highly stressful environment will most likely be found as the cause.
“It comes back to the airspace being too crowded,” he said. “Even on a clear night, it’s hard to see with so many lights.”
He claimed the most likely scenario in his mind is fault on the part of the military aviator, adding: “It was the helicopter pilot who mistook a plane for another one. If you listen to the tapes, he says he has traffic in his sight,” most likely looking at the wrong plane.
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