The debate continues in Congress surrounding one of the nation’s busiest airports. D.C.-area lawmakers want to nix an attempt to add flights to Reagan National Airport. Hanging in the balance is a re-authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration. To get the latest, Federal News Network’s Eric White talked with WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchel Miller on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
Eric White So tell us what’s going on here. Where do things currently stand? I guess we can start locally, since I’m sure that WTOP has been just banging on your door for updates constantly on what’s going on there with Reagan National Airport.
Mitchell Miller Right. And this really is one of the most contentious issues within the more than $100 billion legislation. And that, of course, is this proposal to add ten additional flights, five flights and five flights out into Reagan National Airport. And there has now been a formal amendment offered by the Virginia and Maryland senators who want to get this taken out. They are really upset over the fact that it was included by the Commerce Committee in connection with this overall bill, and they have made the argument for several weeks now that it is really going to be unsafe. That is going to add to more delays for people that go to Reagan National Airport. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine actually went on the Senate floor last week to reiterate his arguments, and he again pointed to the fact that it was just last month that there were two passenger planes that were taxiing down the runway at Reagan National, and not a particularly super busy moment for the airport. And yet they came within 300ft of each other. And as he said, this is a flashing red light to lawmakers and policymakers that this needs to be stopped. Now, on the other side, there are lawmakers from the West and other parts of the country who say that this is not that big a deal to add that many flights, and they have been pushing for this for a long time. Also, Delta Airlines is among the airlines that would like to add these slots. Interestingly, United Airlines is actually fighting them. This is part of an intra airline battle, if you will, because United does not want Delta to get more of an advantage at Reagan National. The other thing that relates to the area airports is that Tim Kaine and others argue that the other airports, Dulles and BWI Marshall, could actually take on more flights because they have more space, whereas literally Reagan National is landlocked. So we’re going to have to see what happens. But this is going to be a very, very big battle as we move forward on this FAA reauthorization bill.
Eric White Yeah, this has been one of the stranger debates that we’ve seen go around, especially for the D.C. area lawmakers who are pretty tight knit community. Do they actually have any shot of getting this eliminated from the FAA reauthorization bill, or is this just going to be, you know, they’re speaking their constituents minds, but, you know, it’s not really going to do much.
Mitchell Miller It does look like there is going to be some movement on this. They have support, interestingly enough, from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Sometimes you don’t know which side of certain issues he’s going to come on, but he is against it. They have also picked up some support from some other senators. And so I think that you are going to see them dig in really, really hard on this. What’s interesting about the overall bill is whether or not this is actually going to get completed in time this week. The deadline is at the end of this week, and when they broke last week, it just didn’t look like senators were going to be able to make this deadline to actually reauthorize it. There is a very good possibility that they will have to do another short term extension. That was hinted at by the number two Senate Republican John Thune, who just said, with all these amendments and this…
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