Break­ing the String of Jew­els

Breaking the String of Jewels

Break­ing the String of Jew­els

The Rea­gan Nation­al Air­port crash was decades in the mak­ing.

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Cred­it: Ceri Breeze/Shutterstock

When I was a child grow­ing up in North­ern Vir­ginia, a favorite sum­mer evening activ­i­ty in my fam­i­ly was to pick up a piz­za at the Ital­ian Store and go down to Grav­el­ly Point. There we watched the planes land just across the field at Rea­gan Nation­al Air­port until sun­set. As the jets flew over the park in their final descent, they always seemed so much clos­er to the ground than they actu­al­ly were. And they came so often! My broth­ers and I chased them with our arms out­stretched, up and down the field while they came scream­ing toward the run­way in an end­less line.

Those sum­mer evenings were all I could think about when I saw news of the plane crash on Wednes­day night just short of the run­way. The plane, a pas­sen­ger jet car­ry­ing about 60 peo­ple inbound from Wichi­ta, col­lid­ed with an Army Black Hawk heli­copter, car­ry­ing three sol­diers. Every­one died. It was the first com­mer­cial air­line acci­dent in the Unit­ed States since 2009 and the one with the most fatal­i­ties since 2001. The col­li­sion occurred at night, so the only footage avail­able is of a blur­ry fire­ball over the Potomac Riv­er. I think it is for the best that the full hor­ror remains occlud­ed in dark­ness. 

In the after­math, once all the con­spir­a­cies were cleared away by the cold light of day, it became clear what had hap­pened. The heli­copter, which was on a rou­tine mis­sion, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was too high, the pilots couldn’t see the plane—no one knows exact­ly how a Black Hawk end­ed up in a pas­sen­ger jet’s land­ing path. But it was not the first time that a heli­copter and a pas­sen­ger jet were caught occu­py­ing the same air space. In fact, around Rea­gan, it’s rel­a­tive­ly com­mon. The air­port, though small, is heav­i­ly traf­ficked because of its prox­im­i­ty to Capi­tol Hill (flights land or take off every few min­utes). And, to make mat­ters more com­pli­cat­ed, the air­port is locat­ed just across from the military’s Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling, which reg­u­lar­ly runs train­ing exer­cis­es up and down the riv­er. It was only a mat­ter of time before, amid all the bus­tle, there was an acci­dent.

And, in fact, pilots have been warn­ing of just such an acci­dent for decades. A recent report in the Wall Street Jour­nal found that there have been a few near miss­es in recent years. Last year, after a pilot near­ly col­lid­ed with a heli­copter while com­ing in for a land­ing, he com­plained that the air­port and mil­i­tary base need­ed “to have bet­ter sep­a­ra­tion for DCA traf­fic on the riv­er visu­al to the heli­copter traf­fic that is fly­ing up and down the riv­er.” And even ear­li­er than that, in 2006, anoth­er pilot issued a sim­i­lar warn­ing. “Why does the tow­er allow such non­sense by the mil­i­tary in such a crit­i­cal area?” he asked. “This is a safe­ty issue, and needs to be fixed.” But until some­thing went hor­ri­bly wrong, there was lit­tle incen­tive to do any­thing.

The details of what exact­ly occurred above the riv­er on Wednes­day are still forth­com­ing. I am not a pilot; I know noth­ing about air traf­fic con­trol; I do not intend with this col­umn to blame any­one or even offer a the­o­ry. More than any­thing I am recon­sid­er­ing one of the gold­en mem­o­ries of child­hood. When my broth­ers and I were kids, we did not just chase the air­planes. We count­ed them. And the heli­copters. And the pow­er boats. And the hang glid­ers. There were so many, all at once. It was a thrill to be in the mid­dle of it all, at the apex of the Bush Era, watch­ing the world con­verge on that small strip of land where the nar­row, dirty Potomac of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. opens to the broad, mud­dy expans­es of Vir­ginia. But now I see it all dif­fer­ent­ly. What was a pleas­ant mem­o­ry is tinged with a sense of fore­bod­ing. And I imag­ine the same is true of oth­ers who, like me, still enjoy watch­ing the pro­ceed­ings at Rea­gan with boy­ish delight. 

Of all the reports filed since the acci­dent, the one I found most affect­ing came from Ari Schul­man, an edi­tor in the city who wit­nessed the crash on his com­mute home. He writes that as he was dri­ving down the George Wash­ing­ton Park­way, he found him­self look­ing out the win­dow at that “string-of-jew­els effect” cre­at­ed by a long, regal line of land­ing planes. There was a gap in front, where the plane clos­est to the run­way should have been. Then, out of the cor­ner of his eye, he saw the flam­ing jet. When he dou­bled back to inves­ti­gate fur­ther, there was noth­ing to be seen on the ground. And in the sky, “the line of jew­els lined up for the air­port was almost all gone—the planes had divert­ed.”

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