‘the Airport Said Don't Do It. And They Did It.’

It’s no secret in Washington — in the halls of Congress and various agencies that call the city home — that D.C.’s airspace is “incredibly congested.”

That’s what former House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio said after a U.S. Army helicopter collided with a PSA Airlines passenger plane on Wednesday, killing all 67 passengers and crew members on board the two aircraft.

For years, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority warned Congress that the region’s airports were at capacity, DeFazio said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. But their pleas for restraint fell short among lawmakers, who voted to add more flights to an airport already struggling with its heavy load and a shortage of air traffic controllers caused by previous government shutdowns and pandemic-era hits to its workforce.

“Every senator in particular wants a nonstop flight to and from wherever they live,” said DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat. He noted that a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration passed last year added even more flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “The airport said, ‘Don't do it.’ And they did it. So they added to what DCA said is already an overly congested and over-capacity airport.”

DeFazio spent 36 years in the House, serving on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee the whole time, and he played a lead role in the congressional investigation of two Boeing 737 Max crashes that killed over 300 people. So, I asked him what he thought went wrong and where the investigation should start.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

Where were you and what was your first thought when you heard about the crash Wednesday night?

I was online on my computer at home in Oregon. It came up as a news flash. It brought back memories of the last time we had a fatal crash at Reagan, which was when a plane clipped the 14th Street Bridge and went in through the ice and a number of people died. So it's a horrible tragedy that happened again.

There has been a lot of concern in the industry over a spike in near-collisions, but most of that focus has been on collisions on the ground. Has the danger of midair collisions been under-appreciated?

This is an incredibly congested airspace. First off, if the military wants to run training missions, they could run them between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when Washington National has noise reductions in place and traffic is dramatically reduced. I don't see any reason to be running training missions during peak hours. I believe that there is a lot of unnecessary military transport in that corridor. When I'm in D.C., I stay on my [house] boat, and I see all of the many, many, many helicopter flights following that same flight path. They come right down over the marina. And it's one thing, when there's an urgent need or a security issue, to move people by military helicopter to the White House or from one base to another in the D.C. area. It's another to do it for convenience for generals and “very important people” who don't want to sit in traffic. We should look at reducing the amount of traffic to flights that are necessary, not just convenient. And for training, they should be doing that in the hours when there are way fewer flights coming into National Airport.

Secondly, it's unbelievable that the president of the United States and three of his minions — Secretary [Sean] Duffy, Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, and Vice President [JD] Vance — immediately blamed DEI. I mean, let's be real here. All air traffic controllers go through the same training. They have to pass the same unbelievably rigorous test. It's a very, very stressful job. They are overworked. We do not have enough fully trained air traffic controllers. That's the fault of both Congress and the former president. We've had Congress chronically underfunding the number of air traffic controllers that we need, in addition to inspection personnel.

As far as we can read in the press, the air traffic controller gave proper instructions. He or another air traffic controller communicated with the helicopter. The helicopter did not respond. We don't know why the helicopter didn't respond, and that was just before the impact. So, this is really the beginning of an investigation of a very, very tragic accident. It was not due to DEI.

Your investigation into the Boeing crashes a few years ago found serious flaws and lapses. If you were going to investigate this crash, where would you start?

There is no black box, to the best of my knowledge, on a Black Hawk helicopter, so we won't know what was going on there. So we’ll look at the recordings and the times of the communications by air traffic control, with both the helicopter and the plane, looking at what other planes were in the air at the same time. There was a specific instruction to go behind the passenger as it was approaching the airport. Was there another plane approaching another runway that the helicopter could have seen, and, therefore, falsely thought they should go behind that? We have to go back and look at what was in the air at that moment, and get all the details and work back from there.

Secondly, certainly we'll be looking at the air traffic controller, but the initial press accounts are that the air traffic controller acted properly.

But we do have long term, ongoing problems with overworked air traffic controllers, because the whole agency is understaffed. You have to be a very qualified controller to be working at DCA. You have to have long term experience. Did that person or those persons have the proper experience, etc? So, everything needs to be looked at.

Don't planes have a collision warning system that will tell them if something's coming into their flight path? Are there similar systems on military aircraft like the Black Hawk?

I believe they would both have ADS-B [Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast], but ADS-B is generally suppressed at a very low altitude because you're in your final approach, and you can get false signals when you're that close to the ground, or when you have planes coming in on adjoining runways which have proper separation. So, ADS-B works well at a higher altitude, but in a very low final approach, it probably was suppressed or didn't trigger because of the situation.

The other thing I would reflect on is the FAA is an agency that has been lacking leadership and in need of substantial reform. Michael Whitakeris the best FAA administrator we've had in years, and he was in the process of implementing reforms to streamline the agency [before he resigned in December] We're not talking about air traffic control now, but we're talking about the agency generally and everything else that the agency does. And, of course, Whitaker upset Elon Musk because the FAA fined him for firing off a rocket improperly.

They need a very highly qualified person leading the FAA, to make the case to Congress for the funding they need to add air traffic controllers, add inspectors, and make our aviation system safe. And I fear that those things won't happen under this administration.

People have criticized President Donald Trump, especially your Democratic colleagues in Congress, for freezing the hiring of air traffic controllers after he returned to office this month. How big of an issue is that? 

Look, let's go back to the first Trump administration. The unnecessary government shutdown [in 2019] shut down the Aviation Academy, and a number of people did not come back after the academy closed down. Then, of course, we had Covid, where the academy was closed for, I think, over a year.

So, we've had at least two major disruptions in the stream of acquiring new air traffic controllers. Plus, a number of air traffic controllers, after not being paid for a month under the Trump shutdown, left the agency. For them to freeze hiring at this point in time is idiotic. If these are people who are trained, coming out of the academy, or they're people transferring with expertise from the military, there should not be a hiring freeze.

Congress has a special relationship to Reagan National. Our headline called it “Congress' Airport.” Why is that?

It's owned by the federal government. And every senator in particular wants a nonstop flight to and from wherever they live. As you saw, [Kansas Sen.] Jerry Moran said this was a flight which he had encouraged or otherwise supported. The last FAA bill, [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz said he needed a direct flight to his hometown, so he engaged in a lengthy battle.

The airport authority said, “We are over capacity. We cannot accommodate more flights, and we think this is going to be disruptive.” Unfortunately, Cruz ultimately won, and Congress mandated adding more flights into National Airport, so that more senators can have direct flights. I was chairman of the committee, and I always had to connect somewhere. I didn't ask for a direct flight. So, that's a problem. That is a problem, the political influence over the airport, as most recently exhibited in the last FAA bill. So, I think we might need to revisit the amount of traffic.

You mentioned how a lot of members of Congress have advocated for direct flights.

The Lords of Congress. That would be the senators. Although there have been a few instances of House members in powerful positions in the past getting some direct flights.

So you think Congress bears part of the blame for increasing congestion around the airport?

Well, with the last FAA bill, they certainly do. The airport said, “Don't do it.” And they did it. They added to what DCA said is already an overly congested and over-capacity airport.