The News
Staffing in the air traffic control tower at Washington’s Reagan National Airport was “not normal” at the time of a plane crash that killed 67 people Wednesday, The Washington Post quoted a government report as saying, as investigators began to probe the cause of the accident.
Two staff members at the tower were reportedly covering the jobs of four, with at least one controller handling planes and helicopters at the same time. Separately, the US Army helicopter involved in the crash was said to have veered off its approved flight path.
Investigators have uncovered the black boxes from the plane, which contain audio recordings from the cockpit, though it will take 30 days for a report to be published, the BBC reported.
Washington DC’s intensely crowded airspace has led to repeated warnings from regulatory officials who warned safety lapses could mean a crash was imminent, Politico reported.
The American Airlines 5342 flight had departed from Wichita, Kansas, and was carrying 64 passengers and crew when it collided mid-air with a Black Hawk helicopter at around 9:00pm, sending both falling into the Potomac River. Rescue attempts have since been called off, with officials stating there were no survivors.
SIGNALS
Years of warnings on airline safety ignored
The worst plane crash in the US in more than two decades follows years of warnings of lapses in airline safety at major national airports, Politico wrote. Ronald Reagan National Airport is already one of the “most complex air traffic corridors” in the country, The Washington Post said, and yet capacity has swollen from a designated 15 million passengers per year to 25 million, meanwhile, air traffic control towers are chronically short-staffed. Though the issue was repeatedly raised by regulators, little has been done: “We are sounding the alarm bells, and we need action,” chair of the National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy said in 2023. “I don’t want to hear about summits — goddamn, do something.”
FAA in the spotlight over outdated air traffic controller systems
A US government watchdog last year highlighted critically outdated systems at the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that provides air traffic services across the country, with some containing components that are more than 50 years old, The New York Times wrote in September. The FAA’s aging air traffic controller systems rely on outdated software languages and unsupported hardware, leading to “critical operational impacts” on air traffic safety and efficiency, the Government Accountability Office said, adding that the systems could take ten years to modernize. “I’m sick of hearing the F.A.A. and the airlines go, ‘We have the safest record in the world,’ and that’s true, but they’re resting on their laurels,” one California lawmaker said at the time. “And all it takes is one big incident to change that.”
Trump blames Democrats for crash as US disasters increasingly politicized
US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that diversity hiring practices — including employing people with a “psychiatric disability” — were responsible for the crash indicates his instinct to frame major disasters “through his political or ideological lens, whether the facts fit or not,” The New York Times wrote. Trump also blamed the recent California wildfires on diversity initiatives and said immigration was responsible for the New Year’s Eve terror attack in New Orleans, the outlet noted. In a White House briefing on the plane crash, Trump lashed out at Obama and Biden administration policies, singling out former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as a “disaster.” Democrats quickly fired back by pointing out Trump’s moves to dramatically shrink federal spending, in a political tussle that harked back to the blame games of the US president’s first term, The New York Times noted.