Reagan National Airport

Aircraft noise at Reagan National Airport is limited by (1) restricting flights between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.; (2) imposing certain flight paths along the Potomac River; (3) requiring pilots to reduce engine power on takeoff; (4) barring nonstop flights within 1,250 statute miles from Reagan National Airport; and (5) restricting the number of flights to 60 per hour. This last is known as the high density or slot rule. Airlines have generally met local requirements, but shortcomings in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) monitoring procedures raise doubts about the actual level of compliance. FAA officials admit that they generally focus on keeping the flights away from federally protected areas and not on local neighborhoods. FAA also does not regularly monitor compliance with the high-density rule and says that it is impractical to monitor the requirement to reduce engine noise at takeoff. Local citizens' groups do not consider the existing noise abatement procedures and penalties effective and say that MWAA is not using available technologies to determine which airlines violate noise abatement procedures and laws. The MWAA is 10 years old and can only supply limited information on aircraft noise.

GAO noted that: (1) local airport procedures and federal laws contain a number of provisions designed in part to limit aircraft noise at Reagan National; (2) a nighttime noise procedure imposed by the airport authority generally permits flight operations between 10 p.m. and 7.a.m only by certain aircraft that can meet relatively strict noise limits; (3) however, aircraft that were scheduled to arrive before 10 p.m. may land later if an air traffic controller cleared them prior to 10:30 p.m.; (4) this exception recognizes that aircraft are sometimes delayed en route; (5) local airport rules require both departing and arriving flights to follow the Potomac River north and south of the airport for several miles before turning; (6) in particular, aircraft are prohibited from flying over federally protected areas in Washington, D.C., such as the Capitol and White House; (7) airport rules also require pilots of departing aircraft to reduce engine power, and thus engine noise, after reaching either a specified altitude or a certain distance from the airport, depending on the direction of the aircraft's departure; (8) the airport's noise abatement procedure incorporates the federal law that generally bars airlines from operating nonstop flights to or from an airport located more than 1,250 statute miles from Reagan National; (9) although information available from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the number of violations of Reagan National's noise abatement measures suggests that the airlines have generally met local requirements, certain shortcomings in MWAA's and FAA's efforts to monitor airline operations raise doubts about the extent of the airlines' actual compliance; (10) data from MWAA show that violations of that rule have decreased since the early 1990s, in part because airlines have begun to replace older, noisier aircraft with newer, quieter versions; (11) MWAA says it has a high degree of confidence that these aircraft are being operated in compliance with the noise rule; (12) although FAA's data indicate that there were very few instances of pilots' failure to follow air traffic control instructions pertaining to the flight path, FAA officials acknowledged that they generally focus only on keeping aircraft away from the federally protected areas in Washington, D.C., and do not track the number of incidents where pilots may have strayed from the flight path over local neighborhoods; and (13) local groups do not believe that existing procedures and penalties are as effective as they should be in encouraging airlines' compliance with noise abatement requirements.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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