The congressional delegation in the D.C. region notched a win on Wednesday evening when the House of Representatives roundly rejected an attempt to add more long-haul flights to Reagan National Airport.

The proposal to add flights came in the form of an amendment to the reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration, which lawmakers are considering this week. The amendment, from Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), would have added seven new round-trip flights to destinations beyond the congressionally-mandated 1,250-mile perimeter for the airport. The amendment was defeated in a bipartisan vote, 205-229.

Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat who represents Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, which includes the airport, called the vote “a win for our region, for my constituents, and for all passengers who value safe and efficient operations at DCA.”

“I thank our bicameral DMV regional delegation who stood unified against this attempt to force changes on DCA which would have hurt safety and increased delays, cancellations, and costs,” Beyer’s statement continued.

Owens and other legislators, many from western states, had originally pushed for adding a much larger number of long-distance flights — 28 round trips — but fell back on the lower number in hopes of allaying the safety and capacity concerns at the airport. They said the added flights would give more Americans access to the nation’s capital and would make flights cheaper.

The legislators were joined in the hunt for new long-distance flights by Delta Airlines, which was hoping to operate them if approved.

But Beyer and lawmakers from the region, along with local leaders and other airlines, have been expressing concerns over the push to add flights for months. Earlier this month, members of the congressional delegation, including all four of the region’s U.S. senators, held a press conference at DCA where they raised concerns about the airport’s capacity and half-century old mandate. The airport was built to accommodate fewer, shorter-distance flights, with the region’s two larger airports, BWI and Dulles, intended to serve more passengers and longer distance flights, including international travel.

“This airport was built on a footprint that was determined to be sufficient for 15 million passenger trips a year. It’s now at 24 million,” Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said, speaking to reporters at DCA. “To add 56 more flights here would upset all of these balances that are maintained by operating the airports the way that they’re currently operated.”

Dulles is 14 times larger than DCA, but serves fewer passengers. Dulles has 250 gates, while DCA has just 59, yet DCA had served a total of 7.9 million passengers as of April of this year, while Dulles served only 7.1 million. With the opening of the Silver Line extension last fall, both airports enjoy Metro access.

Regional leaders, including the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Arlington County Board also formally opposed adding flights to DCA, in part over concerns it would upset the balance between the two Northern Virginia airports. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees both airports, was also opposed.

“Because of the short length of its runways, over 90 percent of DCA’s flights use its main runway, making it the busiest runway in America with over 800 daily takeoffs and landings, which is a takeoff or landing every minute during most of the day,” said a section of the MWAA website dedicated to the issue. “Making the nation’s busiest runway even busier is a bad idea.”

The FAA itself estimated that adding 25 round-trip flights to DCA runways could result in a 30% increase in delays due to capacity issues on the runway and the airport’s limited number of gates.

There were also concerns about the noise and traffic impacts more flights at DCA would have on residents in Northern Virginia. DCA’s proximity to dense residential areas in Arlington and Alexandria is one of the original rationales for the limitations on the destinations the airport serves.

Beyer offered his own amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill, one designed to limit the impacts of airport noise on local residents by requiring planes to stay over the Potomac for longer on southerly approaches and preventing them from turning over Alexandria and flying over land near Fort Washington. But Republicans in the majority prevented the amendment from getting a vote on the House floor.

The Senate has yet to take up the reauthorization bill, but Beyer hopes the vote on the DCA perimeter in the House will push the upper chamber in a similar direction.

“This strong bipartisan vote of opposition should make it clear, as the Senate takes up their own FAA authorization, that proposals to weaken DCA’s slot and perimeter rules do not have majority support in the Congress,” he said in his statement.

The Capital Access Alliance, the business group allied with Delta Airlines in support of the added flights, said they’d continue pressing their case in the Senate — where they are likely to run into opposition from Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, who plans to carry the region’s concerns into that debate.

“I’ll continue fighting these changes – which would exacerbate delays and ruin folks’ travel plans – as we consider this legislation in the Senate soon, too,” he tweeted following the House vote.