Full ATC staffing still years away after deadly Reagan National collision: FAA

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford does not see the civil aviation regulator hitting air traffic control staffing targets in the near future but defends the agency’s actions following the January 2025 mid-air collision that killed 67 people near Washington, DC. 

Highly complex US airspace is unlikely to be managed by a fully-staffed air traffic control system for at least the next three years, even considering the Federal Aviation Administration’s recently lowered target for hiring new controllers.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said as much during 19 May congressional testimony regarding his agency’s response to the January 2025 mid-air collision between a PSA Airlines regional jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washinton National airport and a US Army Blackhawk helicopter that killed 67 people.

Airspace design that consistently created potential conflicts between helicopters and passenger jets, the FAA’s inability to address complex risks and an overstretched ATC workforce have been cited among many factors contributing to the collision.

Last year, the US National Transportation Board (NTSB) released a set of 35 recommendations for the FAA following the accident. On 19 May, the agency addressed for the first time what it has done to shore up the country’s air safety systems.

Bedford was pressed on the issue by US Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois during the hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

“The FAA’s failure to act on prior safety recommendations led to this catastrophe,” Duckworth said. “What we have seen over the past year is deeply troubling – a continued culture of complacency at the FAA and an institutional belief that the FAA can continue to do the bare minimum work to address a few of the NTSB’s recommendations and call it progress.”

Duckworth zeroed in on a recently released Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan trimming the FAA’s previous long-term hiring goal by roughly 2,000 controllers.

Last week, the FAA adopted a new “controller staffing model” that calls for fewer controllers based on a report from the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board. The updated workforce plan is based partially on anticipated efficiency gains that will come from modernising ATC systems, which will include automation powered by AI.

Duckworth suggests the FAA will use AI tools so controllers can maintain heavy workloads rather than decreasing them. Doing so would be contrary to recommendations made by the NTSB, and the concept has already drawn the ire of the National Air Traffic Controller Association (NATCA).

“Increasing time on position is not efficiency, it’s a safety hazard, especially when the underlying software is unproven and controllers have not been trained to use it,” Duckworth says. “The NTSB has been clear. It directs the FAA to develop time-on-position limitations for supervisory air traffic control personnel.

“Redundancy is what keeps the system safe, and achieving it requires more controllers – not stretching fewer controllers thinner and relying on AI,” she adds.

In response, Bedford called the Transportation Research Board’s study an attempt to “resolve the decades-long argument between the FAA and the NATCA controllers’ union on what is the appropriate staffing target”.

He says both parties “participated deeply” in the National Academy of Science’s evaluation of staffing models that have revised the target number of ATC workers to 12,563 from 14,633 recommended in the same report last year. Currently, the country’s ATC workforce stands at about 11,000 controllers.

“The reason I think this conversation is a bit of a red herring is, even over the next three years with surging staffing, we are not going to get to the level of controller staffing that we deem as appropriate,” Bedford says. “So, we need to work together… between the FAA and the NATCA to make sure that we are most efficiently utilising the resources that we have and using technology to reduce the strain and the workload on our controllers.”

Bedford was confirmed as head of the FAA in July 2025, amid particularly intense focus on aviation safety. He faces the enormous task of upgrading ATC systems throughout the country, with funding coming as part of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”.

He says the FAA has since moved to address safety-critical issues highlighted by the crash at Reagan National, which he says was the result of “failure to translate data into action” following a long history of close calls at the airport.

“That’s a gap we are urgently closing,” he says. “We are doing it through strategic and sweeping reorganisation of the FAA, streamlining leadership roles, eliminating silos that hinder transparency and information sharing, and developing a clear flight plan to guide agency-wide accountability initiatives.”

He points to the establishment of an “integrated safety management office” and a major effort to modernise ATC technology and replace obsolete computers, software and radar equipment.

The FAA also restricted helicopter flights along the Potomac River to reduce potential conflicts. The army helicopter was cruising along that corridor at a higher-than approved altitude when it collided with the MHI CRJ700 operated by American Airlines subsidiary PSA. The regional jet was moments away from landing at Reagan National.

Both aircraft plunged into the icy Potomac, killing all aboard both aircraft. At the time, it was the first fatal commercial aircraft accident in the USA in roughly 20 years.

“We increased support and staffing for our DCA tower, reduced the arrival rates and total daily operation levels and, with the full support of the Department of War, eliminated all nonessential military helicopter operations in the DCA airspace,” Bedford says.

The FAA is also using AI to evaluate other examples of high-risk airspace throughout the USA where helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft cross paths during landings and departures.

In March, the civil aviation regulator issued a general notice suspending the use of visual separation between fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters in busy airspaces, mandating that ATC use radar to maintain lateral and vertical separation between such aircraft.