While the political rhetoric has been hot since the January 29 collision of a US Army helicopter and a civilian airliner killed 67 people near Reagan National Airport, little has been said as to why military helicopters are even operating near that crowded airspace. Despite the claims of “national security needs,” the reason for these dangerous flights is to serve as a mundane air taxi provision for DC’s political elites. According to the New York Times:
The Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Washington on Wednesday was training near a busy airport, and in a complicated airway, because Army helicopters frequently ferry cabinet officials, lawmakers and other V.I.P.s across the area, Army officials said on Thursday.
The article continues:
In many ways, they said, the 12th Aviation Brigade is considered the V.I.P. taxi service of the federal government in Washington.
However, the piece tries to put some “perspective” into these flights by playing to a “national security” angle:
The brigade is particularly responsible for “continuity of government” missions, which include whisking cabinet officials to secure, undisclosed locations in national emergencies, like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In other words, readers are supposed to believe that flying a US Senator from the Capitol to the Pentagon so that person can avoid DC’s notorious traffic makes everyone else “safer.” Likewise, it supposedly is vital to fly a mediocre four-star military careerist to the Capitol so he or she can lobby Congress for even more money instead of letting that officer ride on surface streets. And so on.
Despite the appeal to a one-time event—the 9/11 assault on the Pentagon—it is the very rare occasion when the safety of all Americans depends upon using helicopters to ferry people around Washington. For the most part, the emergency plans are aimed at protecting privileged government officials, such as the infamous plan during the Cold War to house Congress at The Greenbriar in West Virginia in case of nuclear strikes on Washington. All others outside the VIP bubble are on their own.
Any visitor to DC can easily see the helicopters flying overhead on a regular basis, as they have become a way of life. Few people give them a second thought—until one of them is involved in something that causes large-scale loss of innocent lives, as what happened on January 29. Yet, if there is any time to rethink a policy, it should be when we see it in the light of a worst-case scenario.
Even without the presence of military helicopters in the airspace around Reagan National, the airport has always been a major accident waiting to happen. Because of all the “sensitive” locations such as the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, pilots flying in and out of the airport have to fit their planes into tight windows:
The airspace around Washington, D.C., is congested and complex — a combination aviation experts have long worried could lead to catastrophe.
Those fears materialized Wednesday night when an American Airlines plane collided with a military helicopter, taking the lives of 67 people, including three soldiers and more than a dozen figure skaters.
Even in peak flying conditions, experts said, the airspace around Reagan Washington National Airport can challenge the most experienced pilots, who must navigate hundreds of other commercial planes, military aircraft and restricted areas around sensitive sites.
“This was a disaster waiting to happen,” said Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain and chief executive officer of Aero Consulting Experts. “Those of us who have been around a long time have been yelling into a vacuum that something like this would happen because our systems are stretched to extremes.”
News accounts point out that human error, including mistakes by the helicopter pilot and the air traffic control tower, tipped the systematic errors over the top:
The helicopter flew outside its approved flight path. The American Airlines pilots most likely did not see the helicopter close by as they made a turn toward the runway. And the air traffic controller, who was juggling two jobs at the same time, was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated.
Washington, DC, is probably the most self-important city in the world. Its governmental leaders insist on everyone else bearing huge costs to keep the DC bubble inflated and to make these leaders seem more important than they really are. Once in a while, this self-importance collides—in this case, a literal collision—with regular people on the outside and when that happens, the results are tragic. While officials at least temporarily are restricting military helicopter flights near the airport, one needs to ask if this exercise of “closing the barn door after the horse escapes” is too late in the wake of 67 unnecessary deaths.
