EDITORIAL
A Society Based on Privilege Produced the Reagan National Airport Disaster

Feb 3, 2025

Bodies are still being recovered from the Potomac River after an American Airlines jet and Black Hawk helicopter collided at Reagan National Airport on January 29, killing 67 people. Officials are said to be scrambling to figure out how this horrific accident could have happened. In fact, there are glaring problems that likely played a role in this crash which pilots, air traffic controllers and others have warned about for years.

The airspace over Reagan National airport (DCA) is overcrowded with airliners and helicopters. There are over 100 helicopter flights daily that crisscross the area. Army helicopters frequently ferry cabinet officials, lawmakers and other V.I.P.s across the area—in other words, the military runs a taxi service for the federal government. “I cannot imagine what business is so pressing that these helicopters are allowed to cross the path of airliners carrying hundreds of people! What would normally be alarming at any other airport in the country is commonplace at DCA,” one pilot wrote in a report to the Aviation Reporting System after a near-collision with a helicopter. This report was way back in 2013!

Reagan National Airport has the busiest runway in the country, with over 800 flights daily. This means that some flights get diverted to a less busy runway—runway 33, that often intersects with the helicopter highway, as it is known. The American Airlines flight that crashed was diverted to this runway for its final approach.

National Airport is on a small stretch of land with development on one side and the river on the other. It was not designed to handle 25 million passengers a year. Yet in May, when President Biden signed the FAA Reauthorization Act, five more round-trip flights were added. Lawmakers from both parties constantly push to add extra flights for their convenience to get home quickly. They cannot be bothered with using Dulles or Baltimore-Washington airports because they are less convenient. They add all these flights without doing what would be necessary to make them safe, like adding air traffic controllers.

Just the opposite: according to a preliminary FAA report on the collision, “staffing at the airport on Wednesday evening was not normal for the amount of traffic and time of day.” On that evening they were short-handed—meaning one air traffic controller was handling commercial airline traffic AND helicopter traffic. One worker was doing the job of two.

And it’s not just that evening. National airport does not have all the air traffic controllers that the FAA says the airport requires. In fact, nationwide there are not enough air traffic controllers. According to the FAA, the nation’s airports are short 3,000 controllers. This shortage is often made up by having controllers work 10 hour shifts, six days a week.

Every worker knows when you are exhausted, mistakes can and do happen. Cutting back on air traffic controllers is absolutely dangerous—they know this, and do it anyway.

None of these problems has anything to do with the vile and absurd things that President Trump said caused the crash. He made up those lies to distract workers’ attention from the real problems.

In recent years there have been a growing number of close calls that have occurred in the airspace around National. Just one night before last Wednesday’s crash, during the same 8 p.m. hour, a passenger jet had to abort its final approach to avoid colliding with a helicopter. A similar scrapped landing happened a week earlier.

No. The officials know what the problems are, and they chose to ignore them because they could. They have gotten away with it until last Wednesday. Only after the deaths of 67 people did the FAA put a temporary pause on most of the helicopter flights.

This society that gives privilege to a few at the expense of everyone else produces one disaster after another. Workers everywhere are overworked, doing the jobs of two or more, putting all of our lives at risk. Only the working class, unified and organized to take power away from the wealthy privileged class, can change this situation.