Having one air traffic controller monitor two stations in the control tower when traffic slows down is "fairly routine," Dan Elwell, former acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, told Newsmax on Thursday.
Reportedly, that occurred at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., before a Wednesday night midair collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter.
"I can't really speak to controller staffing, because that varies," Elwell said on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "It varies year to year. It varies based on traffic levels.
"I know that having a controller monitoring two stations when traffic subsides, which is what happened last night, is not either abnormal or unsafe. It's fairly routine."
Staffing levels at the Ronald Reagan National Airport air traffic control tower were reportedly "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic" when the American Airlines jet and Army Black Hawk helicopter collided late Wednesday, killing 67 people.
An internal preliminary FAA safety report, which was reviewed by The New York Times, found that the controller handling helicopter traffic in the vicinity of the airport was also directing planes that were arriving and departing.
The Times reported that those jobs are typically assigned to two separate controllers.
Elwell also addressed concerns about the heavily congested airspace at Ronald Reagan National Airport, saying it is "very congested" but "also complex."
"I flew out of there for 15 years with the airlines, so I'm very familiar with the procedures," he said. "And if you are familiar with DCA [Reagan National], it's actually a great [airport] to fly into and out of. But pilots from other bases, who maybe don't fly in there as often, they have to study up and it has its challenges."
Elwell also said that it was likely the helicopter would have been communicating with the air traffic control tower using UHF, or ultrahigh frequency, but did not explain the significance of the probable use of the radio frequency further.
"There has been reported that there was a controller that was working both local traffic and helicopter traffic. And that person would have been talking to the local traffic — being arriving, departing — and she would have been talking both to the American pilot and the helicopter," Elwell said.
"The helicopter, though, was on a dual frequency UHF and VHF and would have probably been answering and talking to her on UHF."
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