Tim Jones: Missourians need greater direct access to and from D.C.

Tim Jones, Host of The Tim Jones and Chris Arps Show

There is a debate occurring this year in Congress over the role of the federal government in managing daily operations at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. DCA is the primary airport for the millions of Americans who visit our nation’s capital, and it is used by thousands of Missourians every year.

The backdrop for this debate is the upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which occurs every five years. The central question is whether Congress should ease or maintain the restrictions of DCA’s so-called “perimeter rule” — a federal regulation specific only to that airport that caps the number of daily flights into and out of the airport outside of a 1,250-mile radius.

To non-Capitol Hill watchers, it may seem as though this question only affects Northern Virginia and the Western United States, but it absolutely affects Midwestern states like Missouri and all states within the 1,250-mile radius as well.

The perimeter rule is an anti-consumer, anti-free market, anti-competitive measure that was passed by Congress in the 1960s to protect the development of Northern Virginia’s other airport, Dulles International (IAD). As a result of this federal policy, there are fewer options for direct flights into our nation’s capital from many parts of our country which in turn have led to abnormally high airline ticket prices. In fact, according to a recent study, Washington, D.C. has the highest domestic ticket prices among all major metro areas in the country, and IAD just earned the title of “most expensive airport in the country.”