DC air traffic controller was 'working two different tower positions' before crash: report

30 January

One of the air traffic controllers at the Washington D.C. National Airport was reportedly doing the work of two employees before the deadly mid-air collision that killed dozens of people Wednesday night.

According to the New York Times, staffing at the airport's control tower on Wednesday was "not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic." The paper cited an internal preliminary safety report from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), which apparently mentioned that one unnamed air traffic controller who was communicating with helicopters was also "instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways." Typically, those jobs are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez corroborated that reporting on Thursday. He tweeted that an unnamed "air traffic control source" confided to the network's transportation reporter Pete Muntean: "there was one air traffic controller working two different tower positions at the time of the collision Wednesday night."

The Times reported that the reason there are usually two air traffic controllers handling communication between planes and helicopters is that pilots of those aircraft can sometimes use different radio frequencies. This means that sometimes helicopter and airline pilots may not be able to hear each other, which adds layers of complication if just one lone controller is handling that job.

As of September 2023, the D.C. National Airport had just 19 fully certified air traffic controllers on staff, whereas both the F.A.A. and the air traffic controllers' union have said there should be a target number of 30. Years of employee turnover and low federal spending levels have left both the D.C. airport tower and other airport control towers across the country chronically understaffed, with the Times reporting that many air traffic controllers work 10 hours a day, six days a week.

During a Thursday press conference, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that diversity, equity and inclusion-based hiring practices (also known as "D.E.I.") by the administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were to blame for the crash. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) called Trump's comments "sickening" and suggested that they were a diversion from his January 22 decision to fire every member of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which had been out of commission for more than a week at the time of the crash.

Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).

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