Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency Act of 2026
Floor Speech
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 7613, the ALERT Act. I thank the committees of jurisdiction for their tireless work on this bill and for adopting significant feedback from the stakeholders, including the families of Flight 5342 and the National Transportation Safety Board.
I extend a personal thank-you to Ranking Member Larsen for his collaboration and support. He and his team have been wonderful to work with through a difficult process.
This bill provides a meaningful and comprehensive response to last year's January 29 collision at the National Airport, which tragically took 67 lives. We must do everything we can to keep this tragedy from happening again.
This bill would implement all 50 recommendations from the NTSB's final report on the collision. It would reevaluate the arrival rate at National Airport, which is too high. It would establish a time-based flow management system to make our air traffic controllers' workload more manageable.
This bill would reevaluate our air traffic control tower facility level to hopefully bring more resources and staffing to the tower.
This bill would improve our helicopter route charts and aims to put guardrails on military helicopter flights in this very congested region.
This bill is an incredible step forward for National Airport, for our region, and for our country, and I hope to see it passed this evening.
However, the ALERT Act is not perfect. It includes ADS-B carve-outs for some general aviation aircraft, and there are still concerns about military helicopter flights in this region not being adequately addressed.
The families of Flight 5342 still have legitimate concerns and put out a statement today on their hopes for improvements to the bill in the Senate before it becomes law, which I support.
I am disappointed to see the ROTOR Act, which had strong ADS-B requirements, fail on the House floor earlier this year.
Madam Speaker, our goal is to adopt the strongest aviation requirements possible. I firmly believe that the ALERT Act accomplishes much of this goal, but that we can and should make this bill stronger.
I look forward to voting in support of the ALERT Act today, as I did with the ROTOR Act earlier this year, with the understanding that more work is needed.
Madam Speaker, as this bill advances, I urge my colleagues in the committees of jurisdiction to make improvements, to close any loopholes, and to prioritize safety for all over the convenience of a few. I thank the committee leaders for their work on this bill.
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