SE Kansas News

U.S. Senator Jerry Moran questioned officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding changes to enhance aviation safety. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee conducted a hearing to evaluate the FAA's progress and delays in implementing safety changes as outlined in the FAA Reauthorization Act. This act was drafted and passed with the assistance of Senator Moran in the previous Congress.

During the hearing, Sen. Moran focused on the FAA's inability to identify several near misses in the airspace of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport prior to a midair collision on January 29. This incident involved American Airlines flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter.

"The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation after the tragic collision at DCA highlighted 15,214 events from October 21 to December 24 of commercial planes and helicopters that were separated by less than one nautical mile," stated Sen. Moran. "That information that NTSB provided came from FAA computer records. Those numbers and other statistics demonstrate to me a continuing problem and circumstance in which there is close proximity between aircraft at DCA. If this information is in the FAA’s computer records, does the FAA monitor these records to recognize trends so that actions can be taken to reduce the risks?"

In response to Sen. Moran's questions, Franklin McIntosh, Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Air Traffic Organization at FAA, admitted that there were failures in their systems leading up to the January 29 accident. He concurred with Sen. Moran's observation that the data "is sufficiently alarming that it should have raised more awareness and action than it did."