An internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety report on the Wednesday night fatal collision between an American Airlines flight and a Black Hawk helicopter has revealed that staffing at the air traffic control tower at the DC-area airport was “not normal.”
The internal safety report, reviewed by the New York Times, stated that the number of staff at Reagan National Airport’s air traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.” The controller in the tower Wednesday evening was handling both helicopters in the airport’s vicinity as well as instructing planes that were departing from and landing on the airport’s runways. The outlet noted that those jobs are typically assigned to two controllers.
The tower at DC’s closest airport has reportedly been understaffed for years, being nearly a third below targeted staff levels as of September 2023, with 19 fully certified controllers. Many controllers have had to work up to six days per week and 10 hours per day.
A May 2024 report from CNN stated that air traffic control stations across the country were around 3,000 controllers short at the time. In the 2023 fiscal year, the FAA hired around 1,512 new controller candidates but lost 1,300 employees during the same timeframe, which included retired employees or candidates who dropped out of training. Around 400 people failed the FAA’s academy and another 109 who had been farther along in training dropped out.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in 2023 lamented air traffic control shortages in New York, calling it “unacceptable,” per Reuters. This came as the FAA extended cuts to its minimum flight requirements at area airports over staffing shortages, with the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control staffing sitting at just 54 percent of recommended staffing at the time. […]
— Read More: thepostmillennial.com
