In many ways, the issues at Reagan National’s control tower are emblematic of the fraying safety net that protects air travel throughout the United States. A Times investigation in 2023 found that close calls involving passenger planes happened, on average, multiple times each week across the country. The near misses were often the result of human error by pilots or air traffic controllers.
At Reagan National, the busy helicopter corridor around the airport became such a concern that safety groups identified conflict points, where the possibility for a collision was highest, according to three people familiar with the meetings.
One was over the Potomac when a plane was coming in to land — on Runway 33, the location where the American Airlines jet had been attempting to land when the Army Black Hawk hit.
The safety groups made a number of proposals, including moving the helicopter routes farther east, according to two of the people. The helicopter routes did not change.
As the safety groups convened, controllers in the tower were frequently under scrutiny for allowing planes to get too close together and failing to give proper directions to pilots.
In an effort to reduce the number of close calls because of controller errors, the F.A.A. identified numerous areas for improvement. Those included following more precisely the agency’s rules for communicating with pilots, keeping safe distances between aircraft and issuing pilots more specific warnings that another aircraft was close to their flight path or on a potential collision course.
Controllers were required to undergo extra training to address these issues, yet some feared that the exercises did little to address the underlying safety concerns as near misses continued, the two people said.
After the close call last May, the National Transportation Safety Board determined in its preliminary report on the incident that there had been “safety concerns” at the airport’s air traffic control tower related to “human performance” that required additional investigation.
“Doing so much, with so little,” Timothy Harman, the control tower’s former top manager, wrote in a LinkedIn post about six months ago, “is a testament to your dedication and perseverance.”
