Scrap over expanded flights at Reagan National bedevils big aviation bill

This week’s vote on a major aviation bill is reigniting one of the Capitol’s most parochial recurring feuds — a spat over how many flights can take off and land at Congress’ favorite airport.

Once again, the senators who represent Virginia and Maryland appear outgunned.

The D.C.-area lawmakers are waging a last-ditch fight nonetheless to try to keep Congress from approving additional flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Their arguments include the contention that the extra flights would compromise safety — although the Federal Aviation Administration has said the agency will ensure safety isn’t harmed.

The bipartisan House-Senate deal that negotiators announced in the wee hours of Monday would reauthorize the FAA for another five years while ordering a host of small and large changes to aviation policy. It includes a provision to add five long-haul, round-trip flights a day at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. At present, the airport is limited to 67 “slots” or flights, both short-haul and long-haul, per hour.

The Senate is expected to consider the bill on Wednesday.

Reagan National is one of a handful of crowded airports where federal law micromanages the number of flights allowed — and its proximity to the Capitol makes it of prime interest to the frequent flyers in Congress, who typically shuttle between D.C. and their districts twice a week.

The notion of adding more long-haul flights to Reagan National appeals to members of Congress from far-flung states and districts who want more convenient travel options back home — and the leaders of the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over the FAA just happen to hail from Washington state, Missouri and Texas. In contrast, Virginia and Maryland lawmakers say such an expansion would increase aircraft noise and flight delays around their communities, and possibly even hurt safety.

The major airlines are divided as well. One lobbying group that supports the expansion counts Delta Air Lines as a member, as well as lawmakers from Georgia and Utah, two communities that host Delta hubs.

An opposing group has United Airlines as a member, which has a large footprint at Northern Virginia’s Dulles International Airport; American Airlines isn’t a member of that group, but has a significant presence at Reagan National that it has an interest in maintaining.

The D.C. area’s four Democratic senators — Virginia’s Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland’s Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen — haven’t yet threatened to go nuclear by tanking the bill over the flight issue. On Tuesday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) also called for a vote to strip the language on the Senate floor — but convincing their colleagues to vote against easier flights home will be a tough sell.

But in a statement Monday, they said they are “deeply frustrated” that negotiators on the bill “have decided to ignore the flashing red warning light of the recent near collision of two aircraft at DCA and jam even more flights onto the busiest runway in America.” They were referring to an April 18 incident in which a Southwest Airlines jet and a JetBlue Airways plane almost collided on the runway — part of a nationwide spate of aviation near-misses that has raised alarms about the safety of America’s increasingly crowded skies.

“It should go without saying that the safety of the traveling public should be a higher priority than the convenience of a few lawmakers who want direct flights home from their preferred airport,” the four lawmakers said.

The FAA did not directly address questions about whether the additional flights would harm safety, saying the agency would answer the lawmakers’ concerns directly. But during a hearing in February before a House panel, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said that with roughly a flight a minute at the airport, Reagan National doesn’t have a lot of room for more. “[You] can’t squeeze much more than that in there,” he said.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said Reagan National’s primary runway — the only one it has for wide body jets — is the “hardest working in the national airspace.” On Tuesday, before a House Appropriations panel hearing, he said his agency “would be concerned about the pressure that [added flights] could put on the system.”

But Buttigieg told reporters afterward that his agency stands ready to implement whatever Congress demands — and will not allow safety to be compromised.

“The FAA is not going to allow anything to happen that isn't safe,” he said. “If there is a choice between safety and fluidity, we always have to go with safety.”

Instead, air traffic controllers would probably deal with the additional traffic by ordering extra distances between flights — which can add up to more delays.

Additional flights at Reagan “would likely have a negative impact on operational performance and passenger experience,” the FAA wrote in a memo last year, when the expansion issue first came up. The memo estimated that an increase of 20 round-trip flights would increase delays by roughly 26 percent.

In a letter sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, first obtained by POLITICO, former FAA Administrator and Delta Air Lines executive Steve Dickson threw cold water on the safety concerns, saying that from his “vantage point as former FAA administrator, this is not accurate.” He accused expansion opponents of “mischaracterizing” the airport’s capacity for additional flights.

Dickson observed that the last time flights were expanded at Reagan National was 2012 and noted that since then technological improvements have been made across the U.S. aviation system.

“The time is right to increase flights to utilize these investments. The FAA has successfully added modest capacity at DCA in the past and is capable and prepared to do so again,” Dickson said.

Why Congress is so involved in the fate of flights at one airport is an artifact of history. In the 1960s, when the much larger and much farther-out Dulles was constructed, policies were imposed to ensure that Dulles would primarily serve longer-haul and international flights while Reagan National would handle shorter hops. To support that, Congress enacted a law saying only a limited number of flights at Reagan National could go beyond a “perimeter,” which currently stands at 1,250 miles.

That figure has been regularly expanded over time, typically as part of Congress’ FAA reauthorizations. But the battle this go-round has been infused by an influence campaign launched by competing airlines, each with their own interests.

A group called the Capital Access Alliance supports the expansion — it is aligned with Delta Air Lines and the Georgia and Utah lawmakers.

Opposing the flights is the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports, which represents the interests of United and American.

The latter group backed the Virginia and Maryland delegations on Monday, saying putting more planes on the runways at the airport would jeopardize “the best interest of the consumer and are ensuring more delays, congestion and cancellations for those traveling to and through our nation’s capital region.”

Meanwhile, the Delta-aligned group reiterated its longstanding argument that the airport is underused and prime for additional long-haul flights. It said Reagan National could stand to order up more than just five round trip flights “to prioritize air travelers.”

“This bipartisan compromise represents a win for air travelers who suffer from some of the highest domestic ticket prices in the country because of an outdated federal regulation that has stifled competition in the national capital region for nearly six decades,” said CAA spokesperson Brian Walsh.

Chris Marquette contributed to this report.