Serious safety concerns for travelers using Southern California’s airports

The National Transportation Safety Board recently held a public hearing to approve its final report on the deadly January 2025 midair collision over the Potomac River just outside Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

During the hearing, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy worryingly warned, “Burbank is one [airport] where commercial airlines have called me to say the next midair [collision] is going to be at Burbank, and nobody at FAA is paying attention to us.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded, saying it is redoubling its efforts to address “hotspots” such as those at Hollywood Burbank Airport. But the NTSB investigation of the deadly D.C. crash found an eroded safety culture within the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, which does not inspire confidence for travelers.

In Southern California, Hollywood Burbank and Van Nuys Airports are well known to pilots for their high volume of mixed airplane and helicopter traffic, creating a complex and nerve-wracking operating environment. Los Angeles International is one of the busiest airports in the country, and John Wayne International, San Diego International, and Ontario International are all growing.

Ensuring safe separation between aircraft is vital to preventing tragedies like the collision over the Potomac River, and reports of serious safety concerns from airline pilots paint a troubling picture of safety over Burbank in particular.

NASA’s Aviation Safety Recording System reports 10 near midair collision events at Burbank Airport between 2016 and 2026. These include an April 2025 near-miss involving a helicopter flying directly over a small passenger airplane on its final approach to Runway 8, where just 400 feet separated the two aircraft. The pilots in part faulted air traffic control for failing to monitor low-altitude traffic.

The FAA responded to the tragic D.C. crash by permanently closing a helicopter route and limiting access by helicopters to a large area around Washington Reagan National Airport when the airport’s runways are in use by airplanes. These are welcome changes, but the NTSB found that frontline air traffic controllers feared retaliation from FAA supervisors for raising safety concerns before the collision. This is unacceptable from the nation’s aviation safety regulator and points to deeper structural problems within the FAA, which provides air traffic control services and regulates them.

This flawed model is being replaced everywhere else. Since 1987, governments around the world have separated the provision and regulation of air traffic control to eliminate the inherent conflict of interest in self-regulation. The separation of air traffic management and regulation is the official policy of the International Civil Aviation Organization. As of 2025, 98 countries have air traffic control services provided by an entity that is overseen by an independent regulator.

The FAA’s outdated self-regulation model is shared by only two dozen countries, mostly developing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. But our dysfunctional Congress has repeatedly failed to adopt modern aviation principles. The current plan to modernize air traffic control aims to spend more than $30 billion in taxpayer funding to upgrade aging facilities and equipment. Still, there is zero attention on obsolete governance and conflicts of interest.

In addition to its broken safety culture, the FAA lacks a culture of innovation and technical expertise. Unpredictable funding from Congress compounds these failings. A central virtue of organizational separation in air traffic control is that the newly dedicated service provider can be structured as a public utility. This allows it to self-finance needed improvements quickly from user fees on airspace users, allowing more rapid and complete upgrades. The aviation safety regulator can then do its job of overseeing the air traffic control utility free from the conflict of interest fundamental in a self-regulation model.

It should not take a deadly tragedy to spur the reforms needed in American air traffic control. Congress should be doing everything possible to protect travelers in Burbank and across the country.

A version of this commentary first appeared in The Orange County Register.

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