Crowded airspace has been a concern at Reagan National Airport. Here is what to know.

Search and recovery efforts are underway at the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – where an American Airlines flight collided midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday night.

The Arlington, Va., airport has been a source of concern in recent years about crowded airspace in the area.

There were more than 23,000 flight operations out of DCA each month in 2024, according to airport authorities — an average of 812 per day. More than 24 million people were passengers at the airport between January 2024 and November 2024, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Here is what you should know about the airport as the investigation into the collision unfurls.

American Airlines was the first airline to land there

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. The airport spans 860 acres, including 733 acres of land and 127 acres underwater, according to the airport.

The airport has 58 gates and its designator name among airlines is DCA. It originally had four runways and today has three — including runway 33, where the American Airlines flight was set to land.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose the airport’s location in 1938 after Congress debated the need for it, but failed to take action. Washington National Airport first opened for flights on June 16, 1941, with American Airlines winning a contest on which airline would land there first.

In its first year, the airport served more than 340,000 passengers and had over 2 million visitors. President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill in 1998 that renamed the airport after the 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

More than 13 million passengers flew American Airlines out of Reagan National Airport in 2023, according to the airline. Fifty-three percent of commercial passenger traffic at the airport is operated through American Airlines.

Congestion has been an issue

A bill last year to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years included a deal to add flights to the already-busy airport, despite a heavy lobbying push against the plan by some lawmakers in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C., who warned of dangerous conditions there.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, said he has been worried about congestion at the airport, which includes an airspace shared by military aircraft.

“Those of us who represent the region have often tried to make the case that, listen, we’ve got a couple of other airports here…Let’s spread the traffic out among the airports because this congestion issue has been a concern,” Kaine told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, adding that he was also concerned about whether there were enough air traffic controllers.

John Cox, a retired pilot and safety consultant, said aircraft coming close to one another is a global problem and there are efforts to prevent it from happening in the future.

“We’re seeing some of that in airspace around the world. So this is something that we’re looking toward technology,” Cox told NPR’s Michel Martin on Morning Edition. “We’re looking toward training to try to alleviate any time that the aircraft get closer together than they should.”