Just after 8:43 p.m. on Jan. 29, an air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, posed a question to the pilots of American Airlines Flight 5342: Could they land at a different runway? There was nothing unusual about the request or the pilots’ assent to it. But the decision to switch runways…
The Federal Aviation Administration said on Sunday morning that its primary system for sending real-time safety alerts to pilots was operational again after being down for several hours. “The NOTAM system is online and operational,” the F.A.A. said in a statement, referring to the notification system. “There were no operational impacts in the National Airspace…
Airline pilots have warned of the potential dangers that helicopters posed in the Washington area before the fatal crash at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night. A database of aviation safety issues maintained by NASA details two startling incidents in recent years that involved passenger jets nearly colliding with helicopters near the airport. The database…