WSJ What’s News - Pilots Warned About Packed D.C. Airspace for Years

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

A.M. Edition for Jan. 31. Officials investigating Wednesday’s deadly aviation disaster near Washington, D.C. recover the “black boxes” from the American Airlines jet involved in the crash. WSJ aviation reporter Ben Katz says crisscrossing flight paths and near misses around Reagan National Airport had been on pilots’ radars for years. Plus, White House aides prepare more targeted trade measures against Canada and Mexico as President Trump’s tariff deadline looms. And the FDA approves a new painkiller meant to eliminate the risk of addiction. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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had prompted warnings for years. There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the congestion at DC.C. has reached kind of a critical point. Plus, with President Trump's self-imposed tariff deadline looming for Canada and Mexico, his aides look for a more targeted approach. And the FDA approves a new painkiller meant to eliminate the risk of addiction. It's Friday, January 31st.

I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Recovery efforts are continuing in Washington, D.C., after an aviation disaster Wednesday involving a military helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 people. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading an investigation into the crash, says it's found both of the jet's black boxes that record flight data and cockpit audio, and it plans to release a preliminary report into the incident within 30 days.

However, as journal aviation reporter Ben Katz is here to discuss, attention is already shifting to factors that may have contributed to the crash. Ben, I suppose we should start with the very unique airspace where this took place. Tell us more about it. Washington, Reagan is really quite a unique proposition when it comes to airports. I mean, the airport itself was built to handle about 15 million passengers and in 2023 it had already exceeded 25 million passengers. So, you know, we're really grappling with these question marks on has this airport been operating above its capacity and what does that mean for the airspace above the airport? You know, conflicting paths of

helicopters, passenger planes, cargo jets. There's a lot of demand for getting into D. Of course there is. And that just provides for a really complicated airspace for pilots to navigate. More than 700 planes had already taken off and landed at Reagan Airport on Wednesday before that crash. Just really an incredible number. And then you look at a government accountability report from a few years ago that found the tens of thousands of helicopter flights are taking place within 50 miles of that airport every year. So busy airspace, conflicting flight paths potentially and pressure from lawmakers to keep adding flights to Reagan. A lot of the pilots that, you know, myself and colleagues have spoken to over the last

few days have really described how chaotic it can be, how difficult it is flying into Washington Reagan. This is because of, you because of the presence of helicopters, but it's also last minute changes. You have politicians who are abruptly deciding that they need to go home, maybe they're chartering private jets. There are schedules that are changing quite actively. It's a very, I'd say, ad hoc airport when you compare it to the likes of even JFK or O'Hare in Chicago, where you typically have big hub airlines that are using those airports to come and go on regular schedules.

DC is quite unique in that way. And as you and your colleagues have reported, just this week there was another incident involving a plane and a helicopter at the same airport. Yes, exactly. There was an incident just on Tuesday, literally the day before a Republic Airways aircraft that was flying into DC Reagan, that they decided to abort their landing and circle. And this was specifically because there was a helicopter that was flying nearby. It's worth saying that helicopters typically are

requested to stay at an altitude of about 200 feet. In the case on Wednesday, the helicopter appears to be closer to 300, 400 feet. So there's a question mark as to whether the helicopter was in the right position. But again, this comes back to the frequency of which pilots have publicly complained about the proximity that they come to helicopters and other aircraft coming into this airport. We've identified a number of cases over the last few years where pilots have reported concern, explicit concern about the proximity they have to helicopters flying into Reagan. To that point, Ben, the Associated Press spoke to a retired US Army National Guard helicopter

pilot Darrell Feller, who was talking about the fact that even quite experienced pilots can encounter confusion in this airspace when they're trying to navigate through it. Let's play a clip of that. So one of the things when I was flying there is you'll have aircraft stacked up, you know, every couple miles. And so you might have picked the second aircraft versus the one that's right in front of you. And you call that I see the aircraft, but it was the wrong one.

All right. So crowded airspace opportunities for confusion. A helicopter pilot may be mistaking one aircraft they're trying to navigate around for another. Pulling back, what can US aviation learn from this disaster, including about how congestion around airports can be managed? This feels like a bit of a wake-up call. It does feel like a big wake-up call. The US has really been living through, you know, 15 years or so of really improving safety

and without a significant major disaster like we saw on Wednesday evening. So this does feel like a bit of a watershed moment where regulators will come together and they'll need to ask themselves, have we been doing enough? What needs to change? There is a question about technology. There is technology that has been developed that can help avoid collisions mid-air or even on the ground. In a case like this, I mean, pilots have quite literally milliseconds to respond to a crisis. So technology will play a big component,

but there'll also be questions about just basic things such as has enough been done to staff ATC towers? This is an issue that arose from the pandemic. A lot of people left the industry. And so we're still catching up on training new workers to kind of lead air traffic control. There's been a massive loss of experience across the aviation industry. And then on top of it, what is the future? What does it look like? Are there ways to digitize ATC? But there is the bottom line here, which is that this is an astounding moment in aviation safety in

the US. And already we're seeing the conversations lead there ask these questions about you know have we been doing enough and have we let complacency sink in. Journal aviation reporter Ben Katz thank you so much for the update I'm sure we'll be following up with you again in the months to come. All right thanks guys. Coming up the rest of the day's news including last-minute discussions at the White House ahead of potential U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico, a new drug approval by the FDA, and more after the break. T.D. Direct Investing offers live support,

so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. The U.S. could impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico as early as tomorrow, following through on a promise made by President Trump on his first day in office.

With time running out before Trump's February 1st deadline, we report that the administration appears undecided on whether to push ahead with the measures targeting two of America's largest trading partners, with officials preparing more targeted measures that could only affect certain sectors, contain major exemptions such as fur oil, or include a grace period before implementation, though across the board tariffs could also still go into effect as threatened. And if they do, I asked Quinton Webb, one of the journal's deputy finance editors, what effect that could have. Now, of course, everything is still in flux, but were these to come into effect?

To take one big example, groceries could be very affected. Mexico provides about half of the fresh produce imports to the United States. If you think about things like avocados, a very large proportion of those come from Mexico. So there could be fewer, more expensive imports that could push grocery prices up more broadly. And then energy costs could be affected. So these tariffs could raise prices for things like gasoline, jet fuel, and home heating oil. Canada and Mexico are both major suppliers of US crude oil imports.

And Quinton, looking beyond, I guess, the everyday kind of consumer level here, what might these tariffs mean for businesses? Well, I think for business, it creates significant uncertainty. At this point, it's not clear whether these tariffs, if they come into effect, will be long term or whether this is a bargaining chip that will then be taken off the table. So business won't necessarily want to adapt too dramatically because it may fall away again. Zooming back further and thinking about it for investors, it could

also sort of change the macroeconomic picture more broadly. So if things go badly, it could lead to kind of a stickier inflation, which in turn will make it harder for the Federal Reserve to continue to cut rates. So there's all kinds of effects that we need to think about here, from the level of the individual consumer in the grocery store, all the way up to people thinking about where a bond deal is going to be, where a Federal Reserve benchmark interest rate is going to be in the medium term. That was the Journal's Quinton Webb. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new type of painkiller designed to eliminate

the risks of addiction and overdose related to opioid medications. A pill made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals marks the first new approach to treating pain in 20 years, underscoring the challenges of finding new ways to manage pain. The medication offers an alternative to both opioids and over-the-counter drugs like ibuprofen, though its list price of $15.50 a pill makes it more expensive than comparable opioids, which are often available as generics for a dollar or less. Shares of Vertex Pharmaceuticals are rallying in off-hours trading. And on deck today, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation metric, the Personal Consumption

Expenditure Price Index, is due out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern, along with data on personal income and consumer spending, and we'll also get earnings updates from ABVI, Colgate Palmolive, and Exxon Mobil. And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevent and Daniel Bach, with supervising producer Christina Rocca, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a brand new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend, and thanks for listening.