Lawmakers sounded alarm about crowded DC airspace months before crash

Here & Now Anytime

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4.6 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland, was one of several lawmakers who warned months ago about the dangers of the crowded airspace above Reagan National Airport. Van Hollen joins us. And, 14 members of the figure skating community died in the crash. Doug Zeghibe, CEO of the Skating Club of Boston, shares how the skating community is mourning. Then, NPR games correspondent James Perkins Mastromarino unpacks the indie hit "Citizen Sleeper 2" with the video game's developer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.2	MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science.
0:13.8	Learn more at MathWorks.com.
0:16.5	Even when you're crying, hurt, pain, you get back up and move forward.
0:22.3	It's not easy, but it's what we all have to do now together.
0:27.1	Morning the lives lost in the plane crash over the Potomac
0:30.7	and pressing the government on how it could have been allowed to happen.
0:43.3	Yeah. been allowed to happen. It's Friday, January 31st, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.
0:49.2	I'm Chris Bentley.
0:53.0	Today on the show, at least 14 of the passengers on the downflight in D.C. were figure skaters.
1:00.1	We'll hear from the head of the skating club of Boston, who is among many mourning the loss.
1:06.5	Also, a conversation with the creator of the indie video game Citizen Sleeper, which is getting a sequel.
1:13.5	It's about an escaped android in outer space, but it has a lot to say about our present-day crises.
1:20.3	Crisis is a very, it's a very salient word. It can mean everything from a kind of productive transition to an apocalyptic end.
1:29.2	I'm really thinking about making, like like more palpable tensions that I feel in the present.
1:37.0	That's coming up in about 15 minutes. But first, investigators have recovered the black
1:43.0	boxes on board the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Potomac River.
1:48.2	67 people are presumed dead after the plane collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday night.
1:54.9	It was moments from landing at Reagan-Washington National Airport.
1:58.7	The main runway of DCA Airport, by the way, is the busiest one
2:03.4	in the country. And months before the crash, lawmakers had warned that air traffic over the
2:09.1	D.C. area was getting dangerously congested. Senator Chris Van Hollen is a Democrat from Maryland.
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