Twenty people died in U.S. aviation accidents within a nine-day span this month, and the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation, Space, and Innovation will convene on Tuesday, June 23 to examine what the sequence reveals about gaps in the National Airspace System.

The hearing, titled "Close Calls: Improving Safety Across the National Airspace System," arrives amid congressional concern that existing safety coordination between the FAA, the military, and commercial operators may be inadequate to prevent future disasters. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) chairs the subcommittee, with Senator Tammy Duckworth as ranking member.

Nine days, four incidents

The cluster began on June 13, when a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet crashed roughly 55 miles southeast of Seattle during a routine low-level training mission. The pilot ejected safely. A wildfire was subsequently reported at the crash site.

The next day, June 14, a skydiving aircraft operated near Butler, Missouri crashed, killing all 12 people aboard — the pilot and 11 skydivers. Two days after that, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress went down near Edwards Air Force Base, killing all eight crew members. It was the first fatal B-52 crash since 2016.

The sequence extended to civil commercial operations on June 20, when a runway incursion at Boston Logan International Airport forced a Delta Air Lines flight carrying 135 people to execute an emergency go-around. Air traffic control had cleared an American Airlines Boeing 737 onto an intersecting runway in the Delta aircraft's landing path.

Earlier in the month, general aviation added to the tally. A Cirrus SR-20 crashed into a house in Wheelersburg, Ohio, after departing Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport, and a Lancair Legacy 2000 overran a fence after landing at Whiteman Airport in Los Angeles.

What the hearing will cover

Witnesses are expected to address recent near-miss and runway incursion incidents, implementation of safety technologies, runway safety programs, and Federal Aviation Administration modernization efforts. Coordination between aviation stakeholders and the federal government is also on the agenda.

The House has already legislated on adjacent ground. In April it passed a bill requiring certain aircraft to carry collision mitigation technology, alongside measures to improve helicopter route safety and separation around airports, update air traffic control processes and procedures, and address National Airspace System safety in Department of Defense activities.

The FAA has moved on staffing as well — but in a direction that may draw scrutiny at the hearing. In May the agency set a new staffing target of 12,563 certified air traffic controllers, cutting approximately 2,000 positions from its previous goal of 14,633.

The stakes

The Boston Logan incursion illustrates the operational exposure at major hubs. An emergency go-around by a 135-passenger airliner after a controller cleared another aircraft onto an intersecting runway is precisely the class of event runway safety programs are designed to eliminate. That it occurred at a facility inside the national airspace system's most congested corridor will sharpen questions about controller workload, procedure, and technology.

The military accidents, meanwhile, raise a separate coordination problem the subcommittee has flagged: whether the FAA, the Defense Department, and commercial operators share airspace and safety information effectively enough to prevent disasters that no single actor can see coming.

Whether the hearing produces legislative follow-up beyond the House's April package — or forces the FAA to revisit its reduced controller staffing target — will depend in part on what the witnesses and subcommittee members can establish about the causal chain behind each incident.