Before the deadly plane crash on Wednesday night near Ronald Reagan National Airport, there were at least 10 close calls at the Washington airport in the last three years that were documented in government records reviewed by The New York Times.
One of the most alarming came last April, when a Southwest Airlines flight was instructed to cross the same runway that a JetBlue Airways plane was cleared by a controller to take off from. The JetBlue plane abruptly aborted its takeoff after a controller yelled at its pilots to stop. The jet came within 312 feet of the Southwest plane, according to a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report and recordings that The Times reviewed. The safety report said that the controller who had cleared the Southwest plane had not coordinated with the controller directing the JetBlue plane.
The next month, an American Airlines jet was cleared to take off at the same time that a private plane was given permission to land on an intersecting runway, according to another preliminary safety report. As the American jet began speeding down the runway, the controller suddenly called off the takeoff. The jet exited the runway but the private plane had already touched down by the time it received instructions from the controller to abort its landing. The controller did not warn the pilots of either plane about the other aircraft, and the two fast-moving planes got within about 1,600 feet of each other.
Those two incidents are now listed in a public database of what aviation officials call runway incursions. That database, which is maintained by the F.A.A., did not categorize any 2024 incidents at Reagan National as serious enough to have the potential for collision.
The close calls at Reagan National were part of a pattern of safety lapses in the skies and on runways across the country. A New York Times investigative series in 2023 found that close calls involving commercial airlines happened, on average, multiple times each week. The near misses often took place at or near major airports and were often the result of errors by pilots or air traffic controllers.
The Times obtained reports in 2023, for instance, that showed that there had been 503 air traffic control lapses that the F.A.A. preliminarily categorized as “significant” in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, 65 percent more than in the prior year. During that period, air traffic increased about 4 percent.
The F.A.A. didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The F.A.A. typically releases statements about incidents that attract public attention. The agency also maintains the public database of runway incursions, though there is often a lag before incidents appear there.
The public database provides only some details about runway incursions. For instance, an entry shows that there was an incident at Reagan National on Nov. 6 involving a regional jet and an Airbus A319 on Runway 19. It does not say what airlines were involved.On a five-tier rating system, ranging from A for serious to E for having “insufficient or conflicting evidence,” the F.A.A. categorized the incident as a C because there was ample time or distance for the aircraft to avoid a collision.
Airline pilots have also previously documented concerns about helicopters around Reagan National. A separate database of aviation safety issues maintained by NASA details two startling incidents in recent years that involved passenger jets nearly colliding with helicopters near the airport. The database contains confidential, anonymized safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in the aviation profession.
In April 2024, an airline captain reported nearly crashing into a helicopter while approaching Reagan National. Just as the jet was configured to land, the plane’s anti-collision technology alerted its pilots that there was a helicopter about 300 feet below the airplane and climbing slowly. Pilots wrenched the plane away from a potential collision before landing safely.
The captain, though, reported that pilots on the jet never received a warning from air traffic controllers about the helicopter and that the pilots couldn’t see it, so they had been “unaware it was there.”
The safety report included a prescient warning: put safer distances between the planes landing at Reagan and helicopters flying up and down the Potomac River near the airport.
A similar incident occurred in October 2022, when an airline captain reported almost colliding with a helicopter lifting off from a nearby hospital. The jet’s anti-collision technology alerted pilots to the potential disaster, sounding the alarm in the cockpit to immediately move the plane to a higher altitude. The captain estimated that the plane came within 300 feet or less of the helicopter.
