To be clear, there should be no assumption that any control tower or pilot human errors are being blamed for the tragic January 29 collision between a landing commuter jet and a military helicopter resulting in 70 deaths at Reagan National Airport (DCA) unless or until all possible contributing factors are expertly examined by FAA’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Nevertheless, there is total certainty that the control tower operator on duty that evening, an individual who — regardless of innocence and circumstances — will carry the emotional weight of that horror throughout his life.
As a former U.S. Air Force air traffic controller, albeit a great many years ago, being party to a fatal event, most particularly involving any action or response failure on my part, would have been unimaginably traumatic.
I vividly recall when an entirely faultless control tower operator colleague of mine at the Chanute AFB in Illinois went through such a wrenching experience following the 1958 crash of a Martin B-57 B Camberra twin-engine jet killing the pilot and co-pilot.
Fortunately, I never experienced high-traffic-level stresses that are routine at busy metropolitan airport hubs like DCA with a complex mix of large and small commercial fixed-wing jets and military choppers.
As one of the nation’s 10 busiest airports, DCA processes 25 million passengers per year.
Additionally, an inadequate national pool of experienced controllers leaves many airports short-handed with tired eyes and minds working longer shifts under chaotic safety-critical conditions.
And yes, this understaffing circumstance correlates with reported numbers of dangerous evasive aircraft encounters.
In 2023, after a series of close calls at airports around the country, the FAA commissioned a study that found that inadequate air traffic control staffing, combined with outdated equipment and technology, was "rendering the current level of safety unsustainable."
The report observes that with "fewer eyes on the airspace … the opportunity for mistakes in instruction is multiplied," noting that there were about 1,000 fewer fully certified air traffic controllers in August 2023 than in August 2012, despite more complexity in the national air space.
The most recent data from the FAA shows that across all airport towers and terminal approach facilities nationwide, only about 70% of staffing targets were filled by fully certified controllers as of September 2023. When controllers-in-training are included, that rose to about 79%.
Some control towers at major airports around the country — including Philadelphia, Orlando, Austin, Albuquerque and Milwaukee — had less than 60% of their staffing targets filled with certified controllers. Reagan Airport (DCA) had about 63%.
According to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), anonymous DCA controllers and pilots reported at least 50 incidents of aircraft being forced to move out of the way of other planes or helicopters in the past 10 years.
Notably, by comparison, most other of the busiest airports in the U.S. had less than five reports detailing near-misses between planes and helicopters in that timeframe.
Miami, which sees about double DCA’s passengers per year with only 60% of its target tower staffing filled with certified controllers as of 2023, reported about three dozen incidents requiring aircraft to take actions to avoid collisions over the past 10 years.
At least 10 ASRS reports submitted by controllers included concerns about staffing, work schedules or fatigue in the last year alone.
One controller in Southern California wrote, "We have been short-staffed for too many years and it’s creating so many unsafe situations."
A controller in Northern California said, "We are already on forced six-day work weeks working overtime every week," with still another controller in Northern California adding, "This leads to controller fatigue very quickly. We need more staffing."
Although an inspector general report from 2023 attributes these staffing deficiencies to COVID-19 pandemic — forced training pauses lasting two years which also increased certification times for new controllers as older ones retired, it also criticized FAA for "limited efforts" to ensure adequate staffing.
In defense, the FAA points out that during the most recent fiscal year, the agency has hired more than 1,800 controllers, calling this "important progress … to reverse the decades-long air traffic controller staffing level decline."
Whatever the deficit's reason, whether partly COVID, or DEI hiring limitations as President Donald Trump has suggested, there is no acceptable answer as to why only one air traffic controller was working two different tower positions at the time of that horrific DCA collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle jet on a cloudless night.
We may never be certain if an air traffic control shift shortage or any ATC inadequacy contributed to the tragedy that took 67 lives on the regional jet and three on the chopper.
It seems apparent that the inbound fixed-wing aircraft flying on instruments was on track in a final landing approach to the airport’s shortest and busiest runway, while the colliding chopper flying on eyeballs was above its authorized altitude.
Whatever the NTSB investigation determines — and they are meticulous experts on such matters — let’s appreciate that we routinely bet our lives on highly-trained and dedicated air traffic controllers.
They truly deserve our appreciation and support.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.