WASHINGTON D.C. — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wants restrictions on military flights approved before government funding runs out at the end of next month to prevent another midair collision like the one over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people in January.
Cruz and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell held a news conference Monday with some of the victims' families to urge Congress to strip some provisions from a massive defense bill that's expected to pass this week. The provisions would allow military aircraft to get a waiver to return to operating without broadcasting their precise location, just as they were before the Jan. 29 crash between an airliner and an Army helicopter.
But amending the defense bill would send it back to the House and could delay raises for soldiers and other key provisions.
When he was asked about the helicopter safety concerns Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune responded that he hoped to hold a vote to add the legislation Cruz and Cantwell introduced last summer, called the ROTOR act, to a government funding package this week.
“I think we’ll get there on that, but it would be really hard to undo the defense authorization bill now,” Thune, R-S.D., said.
Cruz said he will hold up government funding until the ROTOR act is passed to fix the problem.
Cruz said the defense bill provision “was airdropped in at at the last moment," noting it would unwind actions taken by President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make the airspace around D.C. safer.
“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29th crash that claimed 67 lives,” Cruz said.
Before the crash, military helicopters routinely flew through the crowded airspace around the nation's capital without using a key system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring all aircraft to do that in March.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, senators, airlines and key transportation unions all sharply criticized the new helicopter safety provisions in the defense bill last week when they came to light.
Cruz and Cantwell said they only became aware that the sprawling military bill would have that language after it was finalized by congressional leaders last week. They began strenuously objecting as soon as they realized it contained the exemptions.
The families of the crash victims said that bill would weaken safeguards and send aviation safety backwards. Amy Hunter, who lost her cousin and his family in the crash, said Trump and his administration had worked to implement safety recommendations from the NTSB, but warned those reforms could be lost in the military policy bill.
Hunter said it “now threatens to undo everything, all the progress that was already made, and it will compromise the safety around Reagan National Airport.”
The NTSB won't release its final report on the cause of the crash until sometime next year, but investigators have already raised a number of key concerns about the 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash and the helicopter route that allowed Black Hawks to fly dangerously close to planes landing at the airport's secondary runway.
The bill Cruz and Cantwell proposed to require all aircraft to broadcast their locations has broad support from the White House, the FAA, NTSB and the victims' families.
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This story has been updated to delete erroneous reporting that Sen. Ted Cruz was threatening another federal government shutdown if new restrictions on military flights are not approved by the end of January.
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