The crash in DC appears to have led to something of a review of the manifold issues for America’s airports that seem to many to have been growing increasingly problematic since the 2020 Covid pandemic and response, not least of which is that the airports are routinely understaffed and poorly run.
Such is what Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Winsome Sears (R) said when she appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First” program on Friday, January 31. During that appearance, the Old Dominion politician spoke about the issue of “perpetual understaffing” at America’s airports,
Namely, Lt. Gov. Sears spoke about how the combination of very busy airspace, as is the case in the Northern Virginia area thanks to DC, military installations, and general travel, with the problem of perpetual understaffing is a major issue that has to be fixed as soon as possible, before yet another tragedy results.
She said, introducing the matter, “Well, certainly something has to be done. And that’s why the NTSB is doing all that they can, as I’m told, to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. It is a very busy air corridor, we’ve got a lot of elected officials from all over the country coming in and out…we also have a military installation there.”
Continuing, she explained that the combination of roles that happened at the DC airport, where one person was managing helicopters and incoming flights at once, leading to the disastrous crash, was not supposed to happen but did happen thanks in part to the airport being understaffed. She said, “So, this kind of heavy traffic is not unheard of, but we understand that it’s been understaffed. We have someone, the air traffic controller, who is responsible for both the helicopters and the airplanes, and I’m told that it’s supposed to not be that way.”
She continued, noting that the problem of understaffing has long been called out, saying, “And this is something, as I’ve also watched, where the NTSB persons have testified before Congress that this is a problem, where we have perpetual understaffing of our airports. So, something has to be done.”
Still not done, Lt. Gov. Sears continued by sayin that there needs to be an investigation, but this tragedy appears to have been preventable, saying, “And the black boxes were recovered last night and that is going to reveal more information. So, we’ve got to let the investigations happen, but, truly, a tragedy, absolutely.” Watch her here:
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This comes in the wake of the revelation that part of what went wrong at DC’s Reagan International Airport, leading to a crash between an Army VH-60 “Gold Top” VIP transport helicopter and incoming American Airlines flight is that at least one air traffic controller was allowed to leave early, leading to a compiling of duties and massive failure. Reporting on that, we at the American Tribune reported:
Generally, the [NYT] reported, the duties of handling helicopter traffic in the area and managing incoming planes is divided from at least 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the consistently busy airport. It is only after 9:30 p.m., when air traffic in the area and coming into DC slows down, that those duties can be combined.
But that normal safety practice isn’t what happened on Wednesday, January 30, when the deadly accident occurred. Instead, a supervisor of the air traffic control staff let one of the staffers leave the job early, and then foisted the combined duties on a remaining staffer, the preliminary report found.
That occurred before 10 pm, when there was still a large degree of traffic, and thus was a significant breach of safety protocol. In fact, the aforementioned FAA report found that the staffing situation was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
Featured image credit: By Duane Lempke – Duane Lempke Photography, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109526066