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Before an American Airlines plane collided with an Army helicopter near the Reagan National Airport, lawmakers had raised concerns about the increasingly congested airspace above the Washington, D.C., area.
Several helicopter routes pass by and even over DCA, including the one followed by the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the inbound American Airlines flight on Wednesday. The recommended maximum altitude for helicopters on this route is 200 feet. AA Flight 5342's last transmitted altitude was approximately 300 feet.
Reagan National, the smallest of three major airports in the region, is home to the country's busiest runway, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Its runways were originally built to accommodate about 15 million passengers annually, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, told NPR on Thursday. The runways now see well over 20 million a year.
"Those of us who represent the region have often tried to make the case that, listen, we've got a couple of other airports here," Sen. Kaine told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. "Let's spread the traffic out among the airports because this congestion issue has been a concern."
Commercial planes also share the skies with helicopters. Over a three-year period ending in 2019, there were about 88,000 helicopter flights within 30 miles of Reagan National Airport, including about 33,000 military and 18,000 law enforcement flights, according to a Government Accountability Office report published in 2021.
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