Originally Posted by
tdracer
At the risk of adding more politics to this, I've read elsewhere (more than once) that the only reason Reagan National hasn't been closed years ago is because the various politicians in DC want the convenience of the close by airport (instead of having to travel out to Dulles).
IF this is a case of 'stuff happens' and not someone's serious error, maybe it's time to put human lives above the convenience of some politicians and close this airport.
That's a little over the top. DCA was at one time slated for closure with all traffic going to Dulles, and that was opposed by politicians, but it remains open today because people find it useful, and because aircraft are much quieter than they were in those days.
DCA should not be inherently dangerous to operate. It does work under 9/11-legacy restrictions that make it harder to use than it should be and that should be reviewed at such time as the US has a non-lunatic government. But I suspect that a root cause in this tragedy will be the expansion of military helicopter traffic and the Pentagon's insistence on maintaining two routes out of central DC, one down 395 and the other down the Potomac. There will be questions too if the collision was well above the 200-foot limit on the helo corridor. There is no way that a busy civilian heliport would be tolerated so close to a flightpath.