DC plane crash raises questions about strained resources, military use of air spaces

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Wednesday’s midair collision of a civilian airliner and military helicopter at Reagan National Airport left no survivors and called into question whether the airport’s strained resources can handle all the demands put on it.

There’s no question that airline safety has steadily improved worldwide. But in places, rising air traffic, new threats, and an aging infrastructure have made safety systems more complex and vulnerable. 

With the nation’s busiest runway, Reagan Airport in Washington qualifies as one of those complex airspaces. Because of its proximity to the White House, the Pentagon, and the rest of official Washington, it’s also perhaps the world’s most controlled, where civilian and military aircraft and helicopters all operate.

Why We Wrote This

Rising safety is the historical trend in aviation. But is that changing in the U.S.? Wednesday’s crash comes amid what some see as growing stresses on air-safety systems.

On Wednesday night an airliner operated by American Airlines regional carrier PSA, bound from Wichita, Kansas, on final approach to Reagan, collided with an Army helicopter that was on a training exercise. None of the 64 passengers and crew on the American flight or the three crewmembers aboard the helicopter are believed to have survived. Among the victims were 14 U.S. figure skaters and two Russian skaters, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, 1994 world champions.

Early news reports suggest that air traffic controllers had asked the helicopter pilot to maintain separation from the airliner shortly before the crash. 

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. In a press conference Thursday, NTSB officials refused to speculate on the cause of the crash, but that did not stop others from doing so. 

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