In many ways, the issues at Reagan National's Control Tower are emblematically for the fraying safety net that protects air travel by the United States. A Times research in 2023 showed that close calls in which passenger aircraft were involved, took place on average several times a week throughout the country. The almost missers were often the result of human errors by pilots or air traffic controllers.
At Reagan National, the busy helicopter corridor around the airport became such a concern that security groups identified conflict points, where the possibility of a collision was highest, according to three people who are familiar with the meetings.
One was over the Potomac when a plane entered to land – on runway 33, the location where the American Airlines Jet had tried to land when the army hit Black Hawk.
The safety groups made a number of proposals, including moving the helicopter routes further to the east, according to two of the people. The helicopter routes did not change.
As the safety groups met, controllers in the tower were often examined because they could get too close to each other and failed to give pilots the right instructions.
In an attempt to reduce the number of close calls due to controller errors, the FAA identified countless improvement areas. Those more precisely include the rules of the agency to communicate with pilots, maintaining safe distances between aircraft and the issuing of pilots more specific warnings that another plane was close to their flight route or on a potential collision course.
Controllers had to follow extra training to tackle these problems, but some feared that the exercises did little to tackle the underlying safety problems as almost mistakes continue, the two people said.
After the close call last May, the National Transportation Safety Board established in its provisional report on the incident that there had been “safety problems” on the airport tower of the airport with regard to “human performance” that required additional research.
“Doing so much, with so little,” wrote Timothy Harman, the former top manager of the Control Tower, about six months ago in a LinkedIn message, “is proof of your dedication and perseverance.”
