Understaffed, overworked crews plagued Reagan Airport before DC plane crash, lawmakers say
Understaffed and overworked air traffic control crews have long been an issue at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, lawmakers and former operators say — another potential cause of the midair collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people Wednesday night.
The air traffic control operator in charge of coordinating the paths for both the helicopter and commercial jet involved in the collision was doing the job of two people that night, creating unnecessary risk.
The operator made several fatal mistakes in warning the aircraft of the potential collision, including not specifying which jet the helicopter needed to look out for and apparently failing to recognize that the Black Hawk was flying well above the top altitude it was allowed.
Lawmakers and experts said those mistakes may have been the product of understaffing, creating deadly risk with overworked air traffic control operators with too much to monitor.
“We know that normally there would be somebody in the tower handling helicopter traffic and someone else handling plane traffic, because those pilots speak on different frequencies,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Rep. Troy Nehls, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told The Post that Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials had long known about the “staffing issues” and that the air traffic controller involved was “not only dealing with the helicopter flying up and down the Potomac but was also directing aircraft.”
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“Those responsibilities should have been shared,” Nehls (R-Texas) said. “It was one person doing that job.”
Sources told The Post Friday that it wasn’t abnormal for one air traffic controller doing the job of two.
“The FAA, once they realized one person can do it by themselves, they [got] comfortable with it,” the spouse of one ex-operator said. “And then they continue to be short-staffed, so they combine [monitoring] helicopter with commercial traffic to reduce the amount of bodies in the tower.”
“They are already short-staffed and controllers continue to retire, so it made a bad situation worse,” added the spouse, who is an airline pilot. “It’s a stressful job. Six days [a week]. It was killing her.”
An FAA spokeswoman said Reagan National has “25 Certified Professional Controllers and three Certified Professional Controllers in Training (CPC-ITs).”
“CPC-ITs were previously fully certified at other facilities,” she said. “The tower is authorized to have 28 controllers.”
A preliminary report from the agency, however, found staffing levels were “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to Fox News, and that air traffic controllers have been known to step away from their duties for breaks or when there are fewer incoming flights scheduled.
The FAA workforce plan last year also shows the DCA tower had set an optimal 2024 staffing target at 30.
“The FAA wasn’t meeting its hiring goals for a very long time,” a Senate aide told The Post, pointing to a roughly 50% washout rate for air traffic controllers at the agency’s academy in Oklahoma City.
“They either flunk out at the academy or they flunk out in the field,” the aide added. “We’re in a massive deficit.”
Nehls told “Fox & Friends” Friday morning that air traffic controllers have “a very stressful job” overseeing the congested airport, which is built on coastal wetlands on the Virginia side of the Potomac and borders some of the most restricted airspace in the world.
According to the workforce plan, FAA officials reduced their hiring targets from 900 to 510 in fiscal year 2021, which covered the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions — but later pushed the goal to 1,800, which it cleared with 1,811 personnel retained by the end of 2024.
“The best idea is to have the staffing level that the FAA set. Everything else is a Band-Aid,” the operator’s spouse said. “They are not even close to having the right amount of staff. This is not a new problem. It goes back to [former President Bill] Clinton. It’s not going to get any better. … These controllers are the best in the world, they all love their jobs but they are overworked!”
“As an airline pilot myself I hope everybody stays sharp — but it’s gonna remain the same without more bodies in the tower,” he warned.
Some policy staffers on Capitol Hill as well as airline executives have still sounded the alarm in recent years about recruitment efforts falling short.
“I think we’re 3,000 controllers short right now,” Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said on Fox Business’ “The Claman Countdown” in early 2024.
The workforce document faults a “government-wide discretionary sequester” under former President Barack Obama that “forced the FAA to institute a prolonged hiring freeze” — as well as a 35-day federal shutdown during the first Trump administration — for “large hiring and training delays.”
The Senate staffer indicated that other issues plaguing the FAA stretched back to the Obama administration, when a collegiate training program that streamlined the process for air traffic controllers was eliminated.
It was replaced by a program meant to increase diversity that mandated a “biographical assessment,” the staffer added, noting that applicants were even quizzed about their personal tastes with questions such as: “What music do you like?”
That program was later scrapped and the latest FAA reauthorization bill prohibits the agency’s administrator from using “any biographical assessment with respect to an applicant.”
President Trump claimed during a Thursday press conference that his predecessors had “a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program” and that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ran the FAA “right into the ground with his diversity.”
“The FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities,” the president said. “That is amazing.”
The Biden-era workforce plan does state that the “FAA is fully committed to equal employment opportunity principles, seeks to create and maintain a professional and inclusive workforce,” and references the agency’s “Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2021-2025” in particular.
It pledges to focus “on increasing its outreach and recruitment to communities that have historically had low participation rates in the [air traffic controller] occupation,” specifically “persons with disabilities, the Aviation Development Program (ADP), and outreach to Minority Serving Institutions, Hispanic Serving Institutions and HBCUs.”
The National Airspace Safety Review Team issued a report the same year that “raised serious concerns with respect to controller fatigue and off-duty time,” recommending at least “10 hours off between shifts and 12 hours off before a midnight shift.”
The spouse of the air traffic controller added that his wife worked “60 hours in six days” due to having been “held over” on overtime shifts, often starting in the late afternoons, doing an eight-hour stint and having to punch the clock early again the next day.
“It requires constant vigilance. Fatigue and stress can affect controllers’ ability to make fast decisions,” he added, noting that before the staffing crisis, “they would offer overtime. You were not forced to take it.”
