The Bombardier and Black Hawk helicopter accident that crashed into the Potomac River in front of Washington brings echoes of another tragedy, in the same river and city, equally tragic but more spectacular, as it was filmed live by television and broadcast worldwide.
The circumstances were relatively similar. It was winter, but on that occasion, the weather conditions were terrible. Air Florida Flight 90 was set to take off from Washington National Airport bound for Fort Lauderdale Airport (outside Miami) on January 13, 1982, with 78 people on board, including crew and passengers.
The night before, 17 centimeters of snow had fallen at the airport, and although the storm had subsided, it had not ended, the temperature was four degrees below zero, and visibility was minimal. The Potomac, in that pre-climate change era, was covered by a solid layer of ice that prevented the water from flowing, which in Washington reaches several hundred meters wide, because in the US, everything - including rivers - is much larger than in Europe.
The airport control tower decided to leave the decision to fly or not to the Boeing 737 crew. The captain, Larry Wheaton, who had been investigated, with no consequences, by Air Florida for alleged safety violations, decided to take off.
It was a tragedy that was foreseeable from the very beginning. Air Florida 90 almost reached the end of the runway without being able to take off. It managed to do so at the last moment. Then, it skimmed the field where people usually gather in the summer to watch planes take off - and that day, given the cold weather, was completely empty - and positioned itself over the Potomac. It only managed to reach, with difficulty, 100 meters in altitude, and flew 1,400 meters before starting to descend and crash into Washington against the 14th Street bridge, very close to the White House, the giant museums of the Smithsonian Institution, and much of the US government buildings.
What happened then was a horror movie broadcast on television. The plane literally skimmed the 14th Street bridge, where it destroyed four cars and a truck, killing four people, and embedded its tail. The rest of the aircraft fell into the Potomac, where it opened a hole in the ice and quickly sank. Since the Boeing 737 was flying at a very low speed due to the ice preventing its engines from functioning properly, at least 20 passengers survived, according to estimates from US civil aviation authorities. But they were injured and trapped in a partially disintegrated and sunken aircraft in frigid waters.
Cameras arrived when a few survivors were trying to reach the icy shore before hypothermia killed them. The images of the few survivors, on the brink of freezing to death, trying to reach rescue helicopters or reach the shore went around the world. Of the 84 passengers on the plane, only five survived. They were all in the river, which was only one degree in temperature, for more than 20 minutes.
The psychological impact of the tragedy, which had taken place in the center of Washington in broad daylight, was enormous. Thirteen days later, in his State of the Union Address, then-President, Republican Ronald Reagan, mentioned the heroism of Arland Williams, a 46-year-old passenger who helped the five survivors escape before drowning himself. Unlike Donald Trump, Reagan, who had had a major political battle with US air traffic controllers the previous year, culminating in the dismissal of over 20,000 of them for going on strike, did not blame anyone.
The accident remains in the memory of the United States as a particularly tragic event. Also, as a reminder of some people's bad taste, as radio star Howard Stern called Air Florida a few days later from his show to request "a plane ticket from National Airport to 14th Street," referring to the urban street where the aircraft crashed.
The truth is that Reagan National Airport is problematic. For many reasons. Even for its name. Congress gave it that name in 1998, at the behest of Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist, who at that time was on a crusade to name as many public buildings and places after the former president as possible. This did not sit well with the residents of Washington, the most Democratic city in the US, and also those in northern Virginia, where the airport is located, who share the same political orientation. Even today, Washington taxi drivers tell their passengers, "I'm not taking you to Reagan, I'm taking you to National."
Other characteristics of the airport are more complex. The most obvious is that it is an infrastructure intended to serve Congress, not ordinary people. Therefore, its flight volume is considerable, as congressmen often fly to their districts - and some of these are as far from Washington as Washington is from Madrid - every Thursday, returning on Sunday or Monday. Now, civil aviation authorities are even considering authorizing transcontinental flights to satisfy congressmen and, incidentally, lobbyists. This poses a burden on the airport, one of whose runways is asphalt and even melted - with a plane on top - during a heatwave in 2013.
And finally, there is the issue of approach routes. To the airport. Reagan (or National, to avoid upsetting Washingtonians) is in the center of the US military complex. The plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 had taken off from the airport, which is literally next to that building. As a result, the approach and takeoff routes are crazy.
It's not just to avoid the Pentagon, but also the CIA headquarters; which is very close and which Al Qaeda tried to crash a plane into in 1997. As if that weren't enough, Andrews Air Force Base, from where the US President flies, is on the other side of the river, in Maryland, where F-16 fighter jets are always on alert in case an aircraft enters Washington's airspace, which, except for a small corridor over Georgetown, is strictly off-limits to civilian aircraft under penalty of interception or even shooting down. And all of northern Virginia and southern Maryland are full of military and intelligence facilities. Some are monstrously large, like the NSA's electronic intelligence headquarters in Maryland. Others are more discreet.
And finally, an indeterminate number are secret. When the metro connecting Washington to another airport, Dulles, also in northern Virginia, was built, the works were a nightmare largely due to the need to avoid all the region's secret intelligence centers. Thus, trains could not pass near what seemed like ordinary industrial buildings that were actually full of antennas, nor could tunnels cause vibrations that would disrupt electronic communication systems.
In the end, those landing at Reagan know that they have never been followed by so many radars ready to communicate with NASAMS missile batteries protecting Washington, the same ones the US has given to Ukraine to defend against Russian fighter jets. The problem is that sometimes a helicopter - military, obviously - sneaks in, and tragedy is inevitable.