[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
Senators Say NDAA Would Roll Back Air Safety Reforms
NTSB's Homendy Calls Bill a 'Significant Safety Setback' That's Inviting a Repeat of January's Passenger Jet-Army Helicopter Crash in D.C.
Key Takeaways:
- Senators from both parties sought to amend the NDAA after the NTSB, victims' families and unions warned the bill would roll back ADS-B requirements that followed a January airliner-Army helicopter crash that killed 67 people.
- Critics said the bill’s exemptions would let military helicopters again fly in Washington’s crowded airspace without broadcasting precise location data, which the NTSB called a significant safety setback.
- Senate leaders said concerns may be addressed by advancing a separate aviation safety bill requiring broader ADS-B use and revoking Defense Department exemptions while the NTSB continues its investigation.
Senators from both parties on Dec. 11 pushed for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims' families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington that killed 67 people.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash, a group of the victims' family members and senators on the Commerce Committee all said the bill the House advanced Dec. 10 would make America's skies less safe. It would allow the military to operate essentially the same way as it did before the January crash, which was the deadliest in more than two decades, they said.
RELATED: Congress Eyes Passage of National Defense Authorization Act
Image
Cantwell
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Republican Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas filed two amendments Dec. 11 to strip out the worrisome helicopter safety provisions and replace them with a bill they introduced during the summer to strengthen requirements, but it’s unclear if Republican leadership will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to be changed at this stage because that would delay its passage.
“We owe it to the families to put into law actual safety improvements, not give the Department of Defense bigger loopholes to exploit,” the senators said.
Image
Cruz
Right now, the bill includes exceptions that would allow military helicopters to fly through the crowded airspace around the nation's capital without using a key system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations just like they did before the January collision. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring that in March. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the bill a “significant safety setback” that is inviting a repeat of that disaster.
“It represents an unacceptable risk to the flying public, to commercial and military aircraft, crews and to the residents in the region,” Homendy said. “It’s also an unthinkable dismissal of our investigation and of 67 families ... who lost loved ones in a tragedy that was entirely preventable. This is shameful.”
Image
A diving team and police boat is seen near the wreckage site in the Potomac River in January. (Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press, File)
The biggest unions representing pilots, flight attendants and other transportation workers joined the chorus criticizing the bill Dec. 11. Sara Nelson, who is president of the Association of Flight Attendants, questioned why this was proposed. She said these provisions are “not only reckless and indefensible, but also a direct undermining of the NTSB’s safety guidance.”
Another Bill May Fix Concerns
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is looking into the concerns but thinks they can be addressed by quickly passing the aviation safety bill that Cruz and Cantwell proposed last summer that would require all aircraft operators to use both forms of ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, the technology to broadcast aircraft location data to other planes and air traffic controllers. Most aircraft today are equipped with ADS-B Out equipment but the airlines would have to add the more comprehensive ADS-B In technology to their planes.
That legislation would also revoke an exemption on ADS-B transmission requests for Department of Defense aircraft.
“I think that would resolve the concerns that people have about that provision, and hoping — we’ll see if we can find a pathway forward to get that bill done,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
Military Routinely Flew Without ADS-B On
The military used national security waivers before the crash to skirt FAA safety requirements on the grounds that they worried about the security risks of disclosing their helicopters’ locations. Tim and Sheri Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines jet, said this bill only adds “a window dressing fix that would continue to allow for the setting aside of requirements with nothing more than a cursory risk assessment.”
Military helicopters like the Black Hawk involved in the crash did send some location data to controllers through a transponder, but the FAA has said that ADS-B data is more precise and the NTSB has been recommending for decades that all aircraft be equipped with such systems. The Army was concerned about using those systems because anyone — including a plane enthusiast on the ground — can use them to know precisely where a helicopter or airplane is located.
Image
Homendy
Homendy said it would be ridiculous to entrust the military with assessing the safety risks when they aren't the experts, and neither the Army nor the FAA noticed 85 close calls around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash. She said the military doesn't know how to do that kind of risk assessment, adding that no one writing the bill bothered to consult the experts at the NTSB who do know.
The NTSB's final report on the cause of the D.C. crash won't be released until next year, but investigators have already identified a number of factors that contributed, including that the helicopter was flying too high on a route that only provided scant separation between helicopters and planes landing on Reagan's secondary runway.
Want more news? Listen to today's daily briefing below or go here for more info:
