The Real Failure at Reagan National

On Tuesday night, March 22nd, two planes landed at Washington, DC’s Reagan National airport (DCA) without proper tower clearance. As it happened, the air traffic controller, a career-veteran supervisor with decades of experience, had fallen asleep. Despite radio hails and phone calls, the controller couldn’t be roused from his slumber, and the planes landed (without incident).

Ironically, earlier that day, NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, had started its annual safety conference. Their reaction was predictable: what is needed in the tower are more (presumably unionized) employees–someone whose job would be, one supposes, to keep the other person awake for the half-dozen flights that land at DCA between midnight and 6am.

If keeping tower staff awake is our primary concern, a $10 alarm clock, set to go off at regular intervals, would suffice just fine in this regard, and we can forego the tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary and benefits for the second man. We could also co-locate other non-tower flight operations to the tower for the overnight shift. But to focus on the number of overnight controllers or why people are falling asleep on the job ignores the bigger, and more important, picture. This event underscores a deeper problem–one of security, and not safety.

In the days following this incident, a recording surfaced of a fellow air traffic controller operating in Warrenton, VA and in regular communication with the flights into DCA. In that recording, Warrenton blithely tells the pilots of the plane that he has tried calling the tower at DCA to no avail. And that’s it.

Considering that the airspace surrounding DCA is considered to have the highest security priority in the nation, encompassing as it does the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, the CIA, and just about every other essential federal agency. This is the reason DCA was shut down immediately following the September 11th attacks, and why the airspace remains among the tightest restrictions in the nation.

With the Pentagon just miles away, one wonders why Warrenton failed to notify anyone in law enforcement, homeland security, or national defense of the silence at DCA tower. At the very least, why didn’t someone notify Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s own police force? They could have sent someone up into the tower to check up on the napping air traffic controller within minutes!

This is not idle nitpicking, either. Given the importance of DC airspace, and the proximity of DCA to a host of targets, it is not inconceivable for a “tower taking” to be the opening move in a terrorist attack on DC. That the tower was allowed to go silent and nobody in the security realm even made a cursory check is galling to say the least.

If this is not standard operating procedure, then it should be made so immediately. The FAA ought to require that when a tower goes silent in the DC area, those who recognize the potential security breach ought to notify that airport’s law enforcement personnel immediately, who ought to, in turn, notify the appropriate homeland security and Department of Defense agencies.

Moreover, from a proximity standpoint, instead of putting another controller in the tower (which makes little sense from either a budgetary, safety, or security standpoint), MWAA ought to add tower checks to its normal, nighttime security operations. They ought to visit the tower to ensure that all is well, and they can make regular contact with the control tower via radio. They have the manpower on staff, airport security is within their purview, and ensuring that that the tower remains secure certainly comes under their rubric. There is no reason while regular tower checks shouldn’t immediately become a part of that.

It is easy to look at a situation and say, “let’s throw money and manpower at it and see what happens.” But manpower isn’t the central issue–and neither is safety. The planes landed safely and because safety is ultimately the responsibility of the pilots we have two on commercial airliners. From a safety standpoint the various systems worked in this case.

The breakdown here is one of appropriate procedures and we create a system in which there are checks, balances, and, ultimately, accountability. Congress, the NTSB, and the FAA ought to keep that in mind as they review what happened at Reagan National on March 22nd.

[youtube 8tI8Nu4uYqU Andrew Langer discusses this on Fox & Friends]

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