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CNN Saturday Morning News

Flight Restrictions Lifted at Reagan National Airport

Aired April 27, 2002 - 07:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: For the first time since September 11, Washington's other airport is running normally. Flight restrictions have been lifted at Reagan National Airport.

CNN's Kathleen Koch is live from that very location. Good morning, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

Well, if there were champagne here, they would be popping it right now. This is tremendous news for this airport, which, as everyone remembers, was really shut down completely for nearly a month after 9/11. Now it's been a long, slow march back to normalcy, and the changes, the biggest changes that really get it back to normal are happening today.

Now, the first ones are operational. A lot of passengers probably won't even notice them. And that has to do with the way planes approach and leave the airport.

First of all, as planes are flying away from the airport and approaching it, in the past since 9/11, they've had to follow a very straight path. As you can see there, those straight lines going north and west from Washington, D.C., the white lines. That was so that if there was any deviation that an air traffic controller could immediately notice it and notify authorities.

Now you see that curving line, the red line. Now, that follows the Potomac River, and that's what planes will resume following today. It's a different flight path and basically makes it a lot better for the residents around Washington, D.C., who have found life in the new flight path a very noisy experience.

Another change, Miles, is that since 9/11, pilots have basically had to floor it when they took off from the airport to really quickly distance themselves from the White House, from the Capitol, from the Pentagon. Now that's going to change. They'll be able to throttle back their engines and take off at a more normal rate, once they're up in the air.

And that, again, is going to make things a lot more pleasant for the residents of northwest Washington.

Some of the operational changes that have really helped the airlines is that they'll now be able to start flying overnight. Flights have been banned since 9/11 between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., and what that meant was no 6:00 a.m. shuttle to New York. If you were on a flight, say, that was coming in from another area and encountered bad weather and you were supposed to land here at 9:55 and you were late, well, you got rerouted to Dulles.

So frankly, airlines lost a lot of opportunity to resume normal operations, get back up to where they were pre-9/11. Right now, they're at about 82 percent, so they're getting there slowly. But today's announcements make a big difference.

And then one thing the passengers will definitely notice is that the big 757s, the larger planes with more than 156 seats, will again by flying in and out of this airport. They of course had been banned after 9/11 here because of the concern that they carried so much fuel that if they were indeed taken over and turned into a weapon that they could cause a lot of damage -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Kathleen, just a couple of things. On board those aircraft, I just flew in and out of National this week, and of course you have to sit down, stay in your seat, for the first half hour in and out of that airport. Of course, the concern is that somebody might try to commandeer an aircraft. That restriction remains in place.

KOCH: That restriction remains in place. Also, Miles, they feel very comfortable making these changes because every flight in and out of National is supposed to have an air marshal on board. That, combined with the strengthening of the cockpit doors, they felt that these other measures were not as critical.

O'BRIEN: OK, as to the air marshal, still on board every flight, or is that going to be phased out?

KOCH: Still supposed to be. And again, the plan is to add more of them nationwide so that more airports are just as protected with someone with a weapon on board trained on how to use it on every single plane.

O'BRIEN: Kathleen Koch at National Airport, where it's getting busier every day, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

KOCH: Good.

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