Senator Reverend Warnock Leads Bipartisan Effort to Refute Misleading Safety Concerns Surrounding Additional DCA Slots

Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock led a bipartisan group of Senators in urging his colleagues to support the current bipartisan DCA slots compromise

The Senators’ letter provided important context and refuted the misleading safety concerns surrounding the bipartisan compromise

Senator Reverend Warnock is leading the charge to add additional flight slots to DCA and successfully crafted a bipartisan agreement with Senate Commerce committee leadership that is included in the bicameral FAA reauthorization

Senator Reverend Warnock, colleagues: “There is no evidence to support that any near-miss incident at DCA has ever been a byproduct of an overburdened airport”

ICYMI from Punchbowl News: Sens. Warnock/Ossoff/Lummis/Lee just sent this Dear Colleague hailing the DCA slot expansion in the FAA bill

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA), a member of the Senate Commerce committee which oversees national transportation and aviation policy, led a bipartisan coalition of Senators, including U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in urging his colleagues to support the bipartisan Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization DCA slots compromise. The letter emphasized the importance of expanding affordable access to the nation’s capital and provided important context refuting the misleading safety concerns surrounding the bipartisan compromise. Senator Warnock is leading the charge to add additional flight slots to DCA and successfully crafted the bipartisan agreement with House and Senate leaders included in the bicameral FAA bill.

“There is no evidence to support that any near-miss incident at DCA has ever been a byproduct of an overburdened airport,” wrote Senator Reverend Warnock, colleagues. “These incidents have nothing to do with slots and everything to do with making sure controllers have the training and technology to keep our skies and runways safe. The good news is that Congress is addressing those very issues in the conferenced FAA bill by establishing a zero-tolerance policy for near misses, runway incursions, and surface safety risks.”

Senator Warnock has led the DCA slots effort from the very beginning, including:

Introducing the bipartisan DCA Act with Senator Lummis on June 13, 2023
Highlighting the importance of additional DCA slots in a member interest letter submitted to Chair Cantwell
Working intimately with Chair Cantwell and Ranking Member Cruz to craft the five-slot FAA compromise
Drafting the DCA slots amendment and ensuring it was successfully added into FAA reauthorization during the February 2024 Commerce Committee mark up
Fighting for Georgia priorities with Commerce Leadership, strongly emphasizing DCA slots in a letter on March 18th, 2024
Reminding House and Senate leadership of the importance of maintaining the bipartisan DCA slots compromise in the FAA reauthorization in a letter sent on April 12th
Regularly speaking on the floor to Leader Schumer on the importance of the bipartisan DCA slots compromise

Read Senator Warnock’s bipartisan Dear Colleague letter HERE and below:

Dear Colleagues:

We write to urge you to support the retention of Section 502 of the conferenced Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill and to clarify why this provision is critical to expanding affordable access to Washington, D.C. for your constituents.

We appreciate Chairs Cantwell and Graves; Ranking Members Cruz and Larsen; Leaders Schumer, McConnell, and Jeffries; and Speaker Johnson for their tireless efforts to negotiate a strong, bipartisan, FAA reauthorization bill. This legislation supports our pilots, air traffic controllers, and technical experts. It ushers in the next generation of American aviation and continues to improve the safety of the world’s safest aviation system.

Importantly, this legislation also expands access to affordable air service and economic opportunity by authorizing just five new daily round trip slots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).

DCA is a gateway to the nation’s capital and all the cultural, historic, and governmental resources and assets the Washington, D.C. region has to offer. More importantly, DCA serves as the gateway for Americans to exercise their constitutional right to petition their government. We believe access to DCA should be as unrestricted as possible, and that travel options to and from Washington, D.C. should be numerous, affordable, and efficient.

That’s why we introduced the bipartisan DCA Act (S.1933), which would authorize new flights at DCA and ultimately increase competition and lower costs for consumers at one of the nation’s most important travel gateways. Section 502 of the conferenced FAA bill represents months of careful bipartisan negotiations, including rigorous consultation with the FAA, that ultimately reduced our initial proposal to add 28 additional round trip flights to just five and produced the only bipartisan compromise in either chamber’s FAA reauthorization package that equitably allocates new flights at DCA while maintaining existing service to the nation’s capital, increasing airline competition, and lowering costs for consumers.

We would also like to address some of the good faith concerns raised by our colleagues regarding the safety and efficiency of operations at DCA. We prioritized safety in drafting this provision and strongly believe, if enacted into law, the FAA will not implement the provision in any way that would undermine safety at one of the nation’s most important airports. We also want to be clear: there is no evidence to support that any near-miss incident at DCA has ever been a byproduct of an overburdened airport. These incidents have nothing to do with slots and everything to do with making sure controllers have the training and technology to keep our skies and runways safe. The good news is that Congress is addressing those very issues in the conferenced FAA bill by establishing a zero-tolerance policy for near misses, runway incursions, and surface safety risks. This legislation deploys runway alerting technologies at all medium and large hub airports, requires the FAA to implement improved staffing standards developed with the labor workforce to close controller staffing gaps, and increases access to advanced training systems for controllers.

We are proud that this bipartisan legislation will have a real impact on minimizing the frequency of near-miss incidents at our nation’s airports.

With respect to our colleagues’ concerns about five additional daily round trip flights overburdening DCA and leading to delay, we would like to provide a couple of clarifying statistics. According to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, DCA is one of the nation’s most on-time airports, with an on-time performance metric that beats the national average.1 What’s more, according to a recent communication from the FAA, five new round trip flights at DCA could, at most, add approximately three minutes of delay to already delayed flights.

We leave you with the recent testimony of FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker. Testifying before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on February 6, 2024, Administrator Whitaker noted that DCA does have additional slot capacity available, concluding if additional flights were authorized at DCA “[the FAA] will always make sure [DCA] is operating safely.”2 We hope that the Administrator’s testimony provides the necessary assurances that, not only will additional flights at DCA result in a host of consumer and travel benefits to your constituents, but additional flights can also be accommodated safely and with minimal operational delays.

We respectfully believe you should vote based on the interests of your constituents, not the interests of other airports in the Washington, D.C. region. Section 502 of the conferenced FAA bill would authorize five new round trip flights through DCA, bringing more travelers to the nation’s capital along with a host of pro-consumer, pro-competition benefits to Washington, D.C. travelers. We urge you to retain the entirety of Section 502 in a final FAA reauthorization package and look forward to supporting a bill that includes this carefully negotiated, bipartisan provision.

Sincerely,

###