A preliminary safety report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has revealed that staffing levels at the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport were “not normal” on the night of the fatal midair collision between an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter.
The internal FAA report, reviewed by the New York Times, indicated that the controller working Wednesday evening was responsible for managing both helicopters in the airport’s vicinity and planes arriving and departing from the runways—tasks typically assigned to two separate controllers.
Reagan National Airport’s control tower has reportedly faced chronic understaffing issues for years. As of September 2023, the tower had only 19 fully certified controllers, nearly a third below targeted staffing levels. Many controllers were reportedly working six-day weeks and 10-hour shifts to compensate for the shortage.
Nationwide, air traffic control centers were short by approximately 3,000 controllers as of May 2024, per a CNN report.
While the FAA hired around 1,512 new candidates in the 2023 fiscal year, it lost 1,300 employees due to retirements, training dropouts, and failures at the FAA academy.
On Wednesday night, American Airlines flight 5342 was on final approach to Reagan National’s runway