Senators from Maryland and Virginia made their case to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg against adding new long-distance flights in and out of Reagan National Airport, arguing it is a “small regional airport” that is unable to handle additional traffic
The letter from Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) argues pushes for changes to federal law that would allow more nonstop flights between DCA and other West Coast cities would “further burden DCA’s already strained infrastructure.”
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“DCA is at capacity. The airport was designed to accommodate 15 million passengers and this year, in part thanks to past Congresses adding flights, it is on pace to serve 25 million,” the Senators write in the letter. “These 10 million additional passengers have strained DCA’s resources to the point that in 2022 it was reported that the airport has the third worst cancellation rate among this nation’s busiest airports.”
At issue is the perimeter rule, which limits the number of flights that travel more than 1,250 miles from DCA. Both Reagan and Dulles International Airport are owned by the federal government, which means Congress has the power to decide how they operate. Over the years, lawmakers have carved out exemptions to allow a small number of flights at the airport that are beyond the 1,250-mile limit, including for flights to cities like Phoenix, Austin, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Denver. The 2012 FAA reauthorization allowed 16 more flights beyond that perimeter.
The airport closest to Washington, D.C., has been subject to restrictions that limit the number of flights that travel more than 1,250 miles from Reagan for nearly 60 years in an effort to protect long-haul airline traffic at Dulles.
The senators were rebutting a different letter sent to Buttiegieg earlier this summer from Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Mike Lee (R-UT) expressing concerns about “consumer and competitive limitations” regarding the rule.
The senators also sought to highlight mixed messages from a 2020 Government Accountability Office report that analyzed previous slot exemptions at DCA and found that delays caused by the addition of perimeter flights in 2012 were not substantial. They also reference flight delay data for 2019, which found the percentage of on-time departures and arrivals at DCA is slightly above average across larger hub airports.
The GAO report stands in contrast to a recent internal FAA memo that found 20 more daily round-trip operations would increase delays by 25.9%, and an increase of 25 daily round-trip operations would increase delays by 33.2% at DCA.
The Virginia and Maryland Senate delegations emphasized that GAO reports referenced in the letter from Ossoff and Lee are irrelevant because DCA “serves over 25% more passengers today than it did when new flights were last added.”
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“One can only expect that more flights added today, when six million more passengers travel through DCA and without any meaningful expansion of DCA’s capacity, would have an even more severe effect,” they write.
The lobbying fight comes as lawmakers are still renegotiating the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration bill. Lawmakers have until the end of September to reauthorize the agency for the next five years.