The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday announced it would permanently restrict\u00a0 \u201cnon-essential\u201d helicopter operations around the District of Columbia’s Reagan Washington National Airport after a deadly midair collision between an Army helicopter and a commercial jet in January.<\/p>\n
The new rules, which seek to eliminate helicopter and fixed-wing mixed traffic in the skies near National Airport, align with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendations made earlier this week. The board discovered thousands of close calls between helicopters and planes near the airport in the past three years, culminating with a Jan. 29 crash between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines plane that killed 67 people.<\/p>\n
The FAA said it will permanently close Route 4 to helicopters, a four-mile stretch of airspace between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge along the Potomac River. It also is evaluating alternative helicopter routes, as recommended by the NTSB.<\/p>\n
Should a helicopter need to fly through the airspace on an urgent mission, such as lifesaving medical, law enforcement operations or presidential transport, the FAA will keep those helicopters specific distances away from airplanes, according to an administration statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The FAA will also prohibit the use of runways 15\/33 and 4\/22 at National Airport when helicopters are conducting urgent missions nearby, and will limit the use of visual separation to certain Coast Guard, Marine and Park Police helicopter operations near the restricted airspace.<\/p>\n
The new rules follow NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy\u2019s stark comments Tuesday when she called the existing separation distances between helicopter traffic and aircraft landing at certain National Airport runways \u201can intolerable risk to aviation safety.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does make me angry, but it also makes me feel incredibly devastated for families that are grieving because they lost loved ones,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t take a tragedy like this to occur. Unfortunately, one did, and so we are calling on action, but there clearly were indicators where safety trending could have occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n