The US House of Representatives voted 387-26 Wednesday to pass a bill that would reauthorize $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration over the next five years — and to finalize a hotly debated deal that would add flights at busy Washington’s Reagan National Airport.
Supporters of the bill, which received votes across ideological lines in the often-divided House of Representatives, praised aviation safety and consumer regulations. The House vote sends the measure to President Joe Biden’s desk before Friday’s deadline. The Senate agreed to the law last week.
The only member to speak against the bill during Tuesday’s floor debate was Don Beyer of Virginia, a Democrat who, like the entire U.S. Senate delegation from Maryland and Virginia, opposed a provision adding five inbound and five outbound flights on Washington Reagan National Airport on the other side pronounced Potomac River from Washington, DC
The bill:
- Increases funding for the Airport Improvement Program, which funds infrastructure improvements at airports of all sizes across the country;
- Calls on the agency to hire more air traffic controllers;
- Updates aircraft safety certification process; And
- Requires airlines to provide, among many other provisions, more than one automatic refund to passengers on flights delayed three hours or more 1,000 pages.
Missouri congressman ‘couldn’t be prouder’
Passage of the bill was something of a career highlight for House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, a Republican from Missouri and one of the few pilots in Congress.
“I have served in this House for more than 23 years and have long looked forward to passing an FAA bill as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,” he said on the floor Tuesday. “This is the type of bill a CEO only gets to make once in his career, and I couldn’t be prouder of the final product we put together.”
Graves is in his third term as the committee’s top Republican and cannot seek another term under House GOP rules, although he can ask party leaders to override that rule.
He highlighted the bill’s protections for general aviation, a term that can apply to all non-commercial and non-military flights.
Rep. Rick Larsen, the ranking Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, welcomed several provisions of the bill, including airport improvement program funding, which he said could be used for alternative fuel infrastructure and to mitigate noise and other harmful impacts from airports in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The bill would also create a program to support airports replace firefighting foam made from PFAS or indefinite chemicals, fund workforce development grants and ban airlines from charging families to sit together, the Washington Democrat said .
The bill “solidifies a safer, cleaner, greener, more innovative and more accessible future for U.S. aviation,” Larsen said.
DCA flights
Six no votes in the House came from Virginia members who opposed a provision to begin flights to Washington National, also known as DCA.
The state’s congressional delegation and Maryland’s U.S. senators said the airport is already making efforts to safely handle the traffic it currently operates. The addition of flights will only worsen the security environment, they said.
“I am deeply concerned about regulations that would exacerbate dangerous conditions at National Airport,” Beyer said Tuesday. “I cannot support a bill that harms my constituents, disrespects all elected leaders from Virginia, Maryland and DC, and directly harms our airport and the passengers who use it.”
Members outside the Capital Region argued that the additional flights were positive. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, said they would add “connectivity and economic expansion.”
Representative Burgess Owens, a Republican from Utah, also praised the additional flights.
“This legislation [was] “It’s not designed for one airport and one airline, but for all of us,” he said. “It provides greater convenience and more options for families traveling to Washington, DC.”
The five up-to-date routes have not yet been selected, but some members, including Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and ranking member on the Senate committee that oversees aviation, have speculated that San Antonio could be one of the beneficiaries.
Research by Min-Seok Pang, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia, Russell J. Funk, a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and Daniel Hirschman, a sociology professor at Cornell University, found that The US House of Representatives district represented by the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sees more commercial aviation services.
The Show data Transportation committee chairs reported an average boost of more than 5% in flights to their districts from 1990 to 2019. Airlines also increased direct flights to Washington from a chairman’s district, the analysis published last year in the journal Organization Science showed. After the chairman’s term, the numbers generally returned to normal.
