Key Senate and House negotiators unveiled a long-awaited bill early Monday morning to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years, a major must-pass item ahead of the May 10 deadline.
The deal would boost funding intended to avert close-call collisions on runways, improve air traffic controller staffing, maintain the current pilot retirement age at 65, and grant 10 additional slots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, or five round-trip flights.
Congress extended the authorization for the critical agency, allowing more time to complete the $105 billion bill, which the Senate is expected to vote on this week. The House passed its version of the bill last July by a vote of 351 to 69. Its version of the bill raised the mandatory pilot retirement age from 65 to 67. However, after opponents argued the change could affect safety and cause headaches for pilots over 65 internationally, the Senate Commerce Committee stripped the provision from the bill.
The legislation comes amid a new push to improve aviation safety after several near-miss incidents on runways and after a door plug panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet in midair in January. The bill directs the FAA to deploy improved technology in an effort to prevent collisions and protect against cybersecurity threats to aircraft, requires airplanes to have 25-hour cockpit recording devices, and puts in place procedures to improve hiring and training air traffic controllers, who have been facing a major shortage.
Leaders of the Senate and House committees applauded the deal and urged Congress to take “strong and decisive” action to improve standards for the FAA.
“Now more than ever, the FAA needs strong and decisive direction from Congress to ensure America’s aviation system maintains its gold standard, and we have reached a bipartisan, bicameral, comprehensive agreement to do just that,” Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Sam Graves (R-MO) and Rick Larsen (D-WA) said in a joint statement on Monday.
While the final bill did not adopt many of the stricter consumer protections the Biden administration requested, it does require airlines to accept credits and vouchers for at least five years and prohibits airlines from charging fees for families to sit together. Cantwell, the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pointed to the new consumer standards included in the bill.
“It sets into law for the first time the right to a refund when flights have been canceled or delayed more than three hours,” she said in a statement on Monday.
A major point of contention continues to be the provision that allows DCA to have five more slots beyond the airport’s perimeter rule, which currently limits the number of long-haul flights that travel more than 1,250 miles from Washington, D.C. Both Reagan and Dulles International Airport are owned by the federal government, which means Congress can decide how they operate.
Over the years, lawmakers have carved out exemptions to allow a small number of flights at the airport that are beyond the 1,250-mile limit. Initially, the House rejected the bipartisan proposal, 229 to 205, to include seven round-trip flights in its version in July 2023.
Capital Access Alliance, a coalition of business groups that has been advocating the addition of more slots to the airport, initially had been pushing for 28 slots but sees the legislation as a win and is cautiously optimistic about its passage.
“Our view is that the proponents of more flights have already compromised — it’s not even a 50/50 split. Our side is giving more than 80% of the original goal,” Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the coalition, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
However, lawmakers from the Washington area have continued to fight back against the expansion, arguing the airport is already strained by traffic and noise disruption and pointing to an internal FAA memo that found 20 more daily round-trip operations would increase delays by 25.9% and that an increase of 25 daily round-trip operations would increase delays by 33.2% at DCA.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) recently highlighted a near-collision between a Southwest Airlines flight and a JetBlue flight at DCA in mid-April, arguing more traffic at the airport is a major safety risk.
“Some members of Congress view this package as an opportunity to jam even more flights for their own personal convenience into a runway at DCA that is already overburdened and cannot handle extra capacity,” Kaine said in a speech on the Senate floor a few weeks ago. “The gamble is exactly the opposite of improving public safety.”
Capital Access Alliance believes local lawmakers are attempting to “exploit” the recent incident at DCA while staying silent about other close-call incidents that have taken place at other airports, such as IAD.
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Walsh argued the addition of the slots at DCA could add more competition for United Airlines, which has many of the long-haul flights.
“Given how much we have compromised, are these lawmakers really going to block the bill over a handful of new flights,” Walsh questioned. “We’ve consistently made the point that the fundamental reason for their opposition is to protect United Airlines’s competitive advantage and that should not be a valid reason to hold up the broader FAA bill.”
