In the wake of the crash of American Eagle 5342 at Washington/National (DCA) airport, the airport is facing a tough future full of delays as regulators start to restrict the airport’s operation at the same time flights are expanding. If that makes no sense to you, you are not alone.
As reported by Reuters, DCA will have its arrival rate reduced from 28 to 26 flights per hour to create an extra safety buffer at the airport. This comes when traffic is at a relative low point, and it’s already going to snarl operations. But more flying is coming.
I took a look at Anuvu flight status data to show just how things are shaping up. It’s not great.
Washington/National Operational Stats
Data via Anuvu
You can see relative spikes when weather or, of course, the accident itself, caused brief delays and cancellations. But as you can see on the right side of the chart, cancellations have been up and on-time operations (arrivals within 14 minutes) down since the accident.
Arrivals in particular are suffering more than departures at the airport, presumably because there’s enough buffer to turn some of the airplanes around even after a later arrival. But this is just the beginning.
If we take a look at schedules, we are at something of a low point right now.
Average Daily Arrivals at Washington/National
Data via Cirium
First, we have the five new beyond-perimeter slots which were just awarded. This will boost operations starting in the very-near future. You can also see a planned increase from American. I don’t know what that is related to, but my guess is that it may be American stepping in to temporarily use slots that others are parking.
You an see the drop in flying for other airlines on the black line. Why? It’s all about the slow waiver program.
You’ll remember that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) put slot waivers in place for the New York airports to try and reduce the operational gridlock up there. As part of that, they also allowed airlines to reduce up to 10 percent of operations at DCA without penalty. Why? It’s because the FAA knew that many of the New York flights that would go away would likely be on the high-frequenty DCA route. If it didn’t provide slot relief at DCA, those reductions wouldn’t happen.
With that slot waiver, well, the airlines gladly gave up flights.
Monthly Arrivals at DCA from New York Airports
Data via Cirium
That is the state of play at the airport today, but what is the real impact? I don’t have runway timings, but I did go into March to look at the current number of hourly arrivals on a random Monday.
Scheduled DCA Arrivals by Hour – March 10, 2025
Data via Cirium
Early in the day, it’s not a problem. Even in that busy 9am hour, the hours before and after are pretty low, so it won’t have that much of a disruption. But the noon hour is when things start to get tough. And the 3pm/4pm time frame followed by the peak 8pm/9pm time frame is where arrivals have the potential to really get stacked up since they have two hours in row that fall above the limit.
Now, we have to remember that DCA had relatively decent performance until now, so being over the rate hasn’t been a real hindrance so far. But schedules were also a little lower before. Peak times in March have a couple more arrivals than than they did just last month. And those five new beyond-perimeter flights will be starting soon. Combine that with the reduction in arrival rate and things are going to be squeezed.
Something is going to have to be done to fix this airport, and the current bandage is not a long-term solution.
35 comments on “Gridlock Heads Toward Washington’s National Airport”
Send more flights to BWI – it’s not much farther from downtown DC as Dulles and doesn’t have the restrictions that DCA has. DCA will forever be restricted by geographical footprint, location, etc
Reasons that DCA commands a fare premium vs. BWI:
– Distance/travel time: BWI actually is much further from downtown DC – 35 miles to BWI vs. 5.5 miles for DCA. Driving from downtown DC to BWI is takes 45 minutes even in the best case with no traffic. If you’re traveling in the peak direction around rush hour, then you need to budget 1.5-2 hours to be safe.
– Proximity to secondary business districts: Downtown DC isn’t the only destination for business travelers. There are multiple significant office clusters on the Virginia side of the Potomac, including Tysons Corner, Rosslyn, Crystal City, and the Pentagon. Traveling between those business districts and BWI is especially painful, because the limited bridge capacity over the Potomac creates major traffic bottlenecks.
– Transit access: The Blue and Yellow lines on the DC metro take you directly to the DCA terminal. This is extremely convenient, and enables arriving passengers to bypass road traffic in many cases. BWI has a nominal transit connection via the MARC Penn Line commuter train, but it’s not worth using unless your origin or destination is within walking distance of Union Station and the times line up. For most people it is at least a 3-seat ride: Metro to Union Station, MARC to the BWI rail station, and then a shuttle bus to the terminal.
For many routes, passengers already have the option to travel out to BWI for cheaper fares, but they pay a premium to use DCA.
The future for DCA is probably LGA-style slots.
By LGA-style slots, I mean a market that is more constrained by slots than it historically has been, and with more slot swaps and leases between airlines. I’m aware that DCA already has slots, but the allocation has been basically stagnant and inefficient.
CF,
Looking at today’s schedule some of AA and UA’s flights are on E175 and A319/A320 equipment. If there are slot restrictions in the near future can’t the airlines switch to slightly bigger equipment such as the A321? The total number of seats should be about the same. Just curious
I was thinking the exact same thing. On the more frequent routes, they could reduce # of flights per day and up gauge the metal.
That was my thought as well. Those RJ’s really gum up the works.
I believe some flights are using commuter slots, allowing only RJs. According to flyreagan.com, in each hour there are 37 air carrier slots and 11 commuter/regional carrier slots.
hk
What you wrote is true. And American has a very large percentage of DCA’s commuter slots. Aircraft using those slots can have no more than 76 seats.
That could work for the most frequent routes like LGA, ORD, and BOS. But the vast majority of destinations only have 1-3 daily flights, especially state capitals, so consolidating them will be difficult and probably unpopular.
Angry Bob (and others) – DCA is a very unique place in that there is limited demand to a whole lot of important places. If you’re American, you need to serve Wichita and other places with questionable demand simply for political reasons. So if you’re going to do that, you can’t upgauge because demand isn’t there. Even more than that, you need some of the connections to help fill the small plane. This is why there are commuter slots… they don’t want everyone sending big planes to Florida. They want diversity in the network. So, this is all about politics.
In perfect weather, calculate the maximum # of arrivals and departures 1/19 can handle per hour. Shave off 15%. Disregard the other runway(s). There’s your hourly slot allotment. Spread those slots evenly throughout the operating hours. Problem mostly solved. Your welcome FAA.
DCA has long been constrained by geography that includes tiptoeing restricted areas and having to perform very specific approaches that are in very congested airspace. This was readily apparent as far back as the late 1950s when IAD was being planned. That airport was supposed to take on the vast majority of air traffic in the area. Even in the 1970s, IAD was the glamorous facility and DCA was basically an old bus station that had a lot of service from props and DC-9’s from the likes of Allegheny. But……the politicians didn’t like having to go out to IAD or BWI, so they approved a wad of money for DCA to be refurbished into a place of beauty (inside, at least) and the rest is history. In reality, that airport should have been pared down in favor of newer facilities farther out that have the luxury of space. Both facilities can easily expand to pick up the slack from DCA.
And this business of “Dulles is soooooo far away” is very myopic, if not whiny. Yeah, if you’re a little richie from Georgetown it’s somewhat far. But the population center of the DMV has been moving outward into NoVA for decades. Thanks to traffic and/or distance DCA is a PITA to get to if you are from Fairfax (aside from maybe Springfield/Lorton), Loudoun or Prince William Counties. It’s not even that much longer of a trip from parts of Arlington that are near the start of the Access Road. Fact is, DCA should be operated like LCA across the pond, letting the big boys deal with the heavy air traffic. It is not practical to have this busy of an airport that’s located a stones throw away from the Capitol and Pentagon.
Fair point. Not to mention the metro Silver line goes all the way to DCA now.
As I said in the first article about the DC accident, despite what some want, DCA is not going to close and it does not need to close. The flights that use DCA need to be managed much more efficiently.
The impact will be first to connecting traffic which has no value to DC and should be moved to other airlines. The continual ATC delays since the accident mean that AA can’t reliably use DCA as a hub anymore even though they are the largest marketer. Of the major US airline hubs, DCA has the lowest gauge behind LGA; both have high numbers of flights that operate on regional jets that would otherwise be used for longer haul flights if the perimeter restrictions did not exist.
Mainline flights should be given the highest priority and the new outside perimeter flights are all on mainline aircraft as are most flights outside of AA’s hub operations; DL and UA both have some RJ flights.
The now-continuous ATC delays means that connecting at DCA is a risky proposition and it is likely that AA will be forced to increase the minimum connecting time to compensate for the delays or not sell connections via DCA which will make some destinations or flights no longer viable.
Given that AA has said that DCA is one of their more profitable hubs, there will be financial impact to AA.
There might be a move to revisit service to some of the destinations that receive DCA service because of special use slots but the AA connecting traffic over DCA will be the first to be hit.
Much of it probably can connect over PHL or CLT if AA restructures its network.
This. Exactly this. American’s attempt to use DCA as a small hub turned the airport into an operational mess.
I hope the hourly cap becomes permanent. Send the connecting traffic to PHL or CLT (CLT is another mess, but that’s another topic for another day)
In the end Tim, best outcome would be DCA’s closure. Of course that’s not in the cards, but who cares what a winy congress person thinks. Most of them are more concerned with giving tax breaks to king Musk than helping you or any average citizen. Let them use IAD, or BWI if they need to fly it’s good enough.
Sean,
DCA is the preferred airport for the region for destinations that are within the DCA perimeter, just as LGA is for NYC’s 3 airports.
That preference is not at all driven by politicians or legislators’ use of flights to their districts but by the average public that pays the bills while government fares are much lower than averages.
Every politician wants air travel to their district – just as they want road access and new plants -but DCA’s size is driven by high fare paying passengers, not politicians.
The reasons for the DC crash were not because DCA has commercial operations but because the margins of safety were dangerously eroded as a result of too much capacity and poor control of military and civilian traffic that operated in very close proximity.
There are and will be voices that will argue for the closure of DCA for their own benefit but those calls won’t win out over the rational voices that recognize DCA airspace needs to be well-managed and more restrictive with a focus on the most efficient flights which means connecting traffic and regional flights will be the most impacted with little to no impact on mainline flights.
Tim’s right, there will never be an appetite for closing DCA entirely, but there is simply too much total traffic in that airspace. Unless there’s the possibility for major cuts in military use, the commercial side is going to have to do its share.
I’d suggest the easiest way to do this is restricting the type of services offered – specifically, connections:
Ban connections at DCA. For example, if I want to fly from TPA to BTV (a trip I plan on making later this year), and want to fly AA, I should be making that connection at PHL, not overworked DCA. Make DCA O&D only.
And conversely, ban non-connecting tickets from DCA to PHL, EWR, LGA, or JFK. Flying to one of those to connect? Fine, perfectly reasonable – IAD has its limits. But if a NEC city is your final destination, that’s what Acela is for (or IAD.)
This would preserve DCA’s base function as a close-in way of accessing the capital while also allowing reduction in total traffic.
And, finally, reconsider some of the out-of-perimeter exceptions. If you’re going from San Diego to DC, that additional time spent going into the city from IAD instead of DCA shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
The simple solution would be to auction the slots and allow them to be flown by the highest bidder. That’s likely going to be mostly mainline, since the cost of the slot can be amortized over a greater number of paying passengers.
Periodically re-auction all the slots to keep the allocation dynamic and enable new entrants. Use the proceeds to cover airport capex, so that long-term investment in the airport isn’t tied to the fortress hub status of any particular airline.
Should be done at all capacity-constrained airports.
DCA is politicians pork at it’s worst. It should have been closed a long time ago and turned into a park like Meigs Field, but won’t, probably ever, because of political privilege and corruption.
That’s the American truth.
Ironically the only reason Meigs Field was turned into a park, was political privilege and corruption.
D.C. is ground zero for whine growing. I am extremely certain that a logical solution can be found if POLS (both sides) can keep their greedy hands off. Way too entitled (a good reason for term limits).
I vote for the two solutions suggested:
1. eliminate AA hub.
2. Up Guage certain flights, fewer flights to same locations daily.
While I can understand why some would not want to fly to/from BWI/IAD, consider the reasons. The one that sticks out is light rail/metro connections. I mean finish the damn rail to IAD, and put a good one into BWI.
The rail to IAD is finished. It still kind of sucks, though. Travel time on the Metro from IAD to Farragut West is ~50 minutes, with 16 stops. The Metro ride from DCA to Farragut West is ~15 minutes, with 7 stops.
And the business clusters that are closer to IAD aren’t well-served by Metro either. If you arrive at IAD, you could take the Metro ~15 min to get to Reston Town Center, or ~25 min to Tysons Corner. But most of the office buildings at those locations are a >15 min walk from the Metro station, so you’re probably just going to Uber door-to-door instead.
AA is flying CHS-DCA 6x Daily this spring, which seems wild to me (although as a frequent flyer on the route, I’m not complaining). Most weekdays look something like this…
6am on a 319
11am on a 319
2pm on a 319
5pm on a CR7
6pm on a E75
7pm on a CR7
Seems like there’s a lot of obvious up-gauging opportunities there…
The high % of commuter traffic at DCA is a product of regulation. DCA’s slot rule specifically designated 11 slots per hour that can only be used by regional aircraft. If those slots could be used by mainline aircraft, then a ton of those flights would already have been upgauged.
Removing the restriction on aircraft type from those slots would immediately increase available capacity at the airport, and possibly enable the total number of slots to be reduced a bit without reducing total passenger volume.
It would be a windfall to the current holders of the commuter slots (especially AA), but still seems like the right thing to do.
The folks live in the DMV area, especially in DC and Virginia, should fight to take both DCA and IAD out of Congress’ control. It should be controlled by a local authority, like NYC/NJ airports and never by politicians who have no interest in the well being of the DC local communities. Scapegoating DCA/IAD as a part of FAA reauthorization bill has become a regular play for Congress. DCA is a perfect commuter airport and can function really well as the best O&D airport in the country. IAD and BWI can handle connections and IAD already handles almost all of the international traffic from this region. Also, the typical nonsense that all these aviation bloggers and press repeating that IAD is too far and DCA is too close, do not know how the region has changed in the last three decades. Two wealthiest counties in the country have much easier access to IAD than DCA. The Tysons Corner and Dulles Technology corridor, which combined have the most third most Class A office space on the east coast (next only to Manhattan and Downtown Washington and more than downtown Boston, Philly and Atlanta). The market forces should determine the future of DCA and not the Congress.
At the risk of sounding really cynical, in no conceivable universe is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey not dominated by politicians, many of whom have no interest in the NYC area. The PANYNJ is governed by the states of NY and NJ, so politicians from upstate NY and southern NJ interfere with its governance. The Port Authority is one of the most hated agencies in the NY metro area (although the MTA is worse, IMO), although recently it has done better on the airport side – the renovations at LGA have gone surprisingly well. I’d presumed the PA would screw it up, but I was wrong.
BWI, DCA, and IAD are all growing significantly.
The biggest thing that the MWAA could do to shift flights to IAD would be to find ways to reduce the cost-per-enplanement at IAD. CPE at IAD is currently the highest in the region (~65% higher than DCA), and the high costs have prevented LCCs from making a sustained investment there. Frontier at one point had designated IAD as a focus city, but has almost entirely pulled out due to the high cost of operating there.
and IAD is subsidized by DCA.
and UA absolutely does not want lower CPEs.
Even though they want to see AA’s hub at DCA and DCA itself be eliminated, they are happy to have a higher market share at IAD than any other airline has at any Baltimore/Washington DC area airport.
It is precisely because there are commercial winners and losers in any solution to fix DCA that prevent any of them from being completely implemented.
Same is true for NYC’s 3 airports
Tim, United doesn’t want to keep CPEs high. The high cost is why it took them so long to commit to IAD and why they haven’t been able to replace Concourse C/D or finish the train. No one has seriously tried to compete there since the failed Independence Air experiment, which is also what got the airport in financial trouble to begin with.
And DCA should subsidize IAD. It should have operations limited to just runway 1/19 and the landing fees should be artificially high. If out of towners like you are determined to use it, have at it… for a price. Then get rid of the commuter slots and limit the number of takeoffs/landings to what 1/19 can handle on an average weather day. Then use the fees to build more concourses at IAD, or even have congress create legislation to have the fees go towards the Silver Line Express proposal, which would allow Silver line trains to bypass a number of current stops and make it quicker to get to IAD.
As I understand it, American holds the vast majority of the commuter slots at DCA (which some of the commentors here believe gum up the works at DCA). And those slots make up a considerable percentage of its slot portfolio. A whole new concourse was constructed at DCA to accommodate those commuter flights. I can’t see American willingly agreeing to an arbitrary restriction that only limits its commuter slots and places no restrictions on any other carriers.
It seems to me (as a somewhat uninformed observer, as I don’t live in the Washington area) that a possible compromise could be reached if the size restriction on aircraft operated under a commuter slot was raised to, say, 135 seats (the approximate number of seats in an Airbus A220-300 or A319), and all carriers at DCA took a proportional “haircut” in terms of the number of overall slots and seats they’re allowed to operate.
I saw a proposal floated on Airliners.net about the possibility of repurposing Joint Base Andrews as a civilian facility and converting DCA into a military base, since it’s right next to the Pentagon. A terminal building would have to be built at Andrews, so it would take a few years to pull off the switch. I’m not sure if this suggestion is practical, but I thought it was interesting enough to repeat here.
There is no metro to Andrews which makes it basically unusable compared to current state DC.
And I don’t see Air Force 1 getting off the DCA runway as it stands.
Close DCA is mentioned frequently, but Congress won’t give up their close in airport.
Looking at a map, Andrews AFB isn’t much further from downtown DC. Make it a dual use field and then Congress still has their close in airport.
I don’t know the traffic counts at Andrews, but even a busy AFB is usually not much compared to a commercial airport. Andrews also has nice long parallel runways for simultaneous operations.
Interesting idea. Most don’t realize that Orlando’s code MCO stands for Mccoy Airforce Base & was turned into the international gateway for the metro area.
I do think a more granular, hourly-based slot system that better reflects ATC limits (e.g., not okay to have 35 scheduled arrivals in an hour when ATC only has capacity for 26) is useful and necessary to maintaining reliable operation at DCA, so it can continue generating value for the DC area and airlines serving it.
But the goal of “value generation” also begs the question – what is the value in artificially limiting the set of places and people that can benefit from DCA, if there is such benefit to being served by DCA? In other words, what has kept perimeters around at LGA/DCA for the decades since they were introduced? As an AUS-based flier, the arbitrary limit has never felt reasonable or fair to me. Is there a magic quantity of fuel or seats that aircrafts carry, such that flying to DFW/IAH does not create as much noise, pollution, or disruption to the local community, but the extra <200 miles required to reach AUS is too much? If so, then why grant exemption slots? If not, then why have a perimeter? I am hard-pressed to find ways of community impact that could not be measured and managed in much more direct ways than setting the perimeter: for example, if one is unhappy with the noise of aircrafts, shouldn’t one measure by the decibel of an aircraft flying past a certain point, instead of the distance from the final destination?
So, in my humble view, more direct metrics for measuring impact and a more holistic view of slots, both in equipment size (to my understanding, regional jets are only ever “requested” to land on the two shorter runways during permissible weather, and pilots may always decline and use 1/19, so the number of seats onboard need not have any bearing on the amount of time the airport needs to handle it, unless it has the same level of turbulence as a heavy jet, like a 757) and range, may help DCA improve its coverage and ability to provide value to travelers – and I do hope that DCA will move towards such a direction as it rethinks its slots.