The president signed the Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation order last Tuesday.
An incident occurred on Wednesday when an American Airlines plane, with 60 passengers and four crew members on board, collided with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington. This led to a search-and-rescue mission in the Potomac River vicinity.
Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said.
The cause of the collision was not immediately known. All air traffic in and out of the airport was suspended while dive teams combed the area, and helicopters from various law enforcement agencies conducted a thorough search operation.
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Amid the ongoing extensive search efforts, it is important to mention that President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order titled Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation.
On the president’s social media platform Truth Social, he wrote that the bad situation looks like it could have been avoided.Â
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!,” the president wrote.Â
Trump’s order emphasizes the need to hire more Federal Aviation Administration employees. It also instructs the FAA to end all DEI hiring practices to accomplish that goal. We have reported in the past about the FAA’s push to hire more air traffic controllers. In September, the FAA said it had reached hiring goals for the fiscal year by bringing on more than 1,800 new air traffic controlers.
The FAA says it’s the largest number of hires the organization has made in nearly a decade.Â
That shortage of air traffic controllers is one of the reasons we saw local lawmakers pushing back against adding more flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). It already has the busiest commercial runways in the United States.Â
Still, five new roundtrip flight routes were approved for DCA in October as part of the Reauthorization Act. Those flights are not set to start until March.Â
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