White House construction may have contributed to Trump’s Marine One close to a commercial jet – What we know | Today’s news
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) believed that ongoing construction at the White House contributed to radio problems that led to a close call between Marine One, which was carrying US President Donald Trump, and an Envoy Air plane earlier this month.
In its new report, the NTSB said there were communication problems between air traffic control frequencies and Marine One just before the airliner got too close to Marine One, which took off from a temporary site at the White House on Aug. 4.
“Inappropriate line of sight”
The seven-page report said that due to ongoing construction on the White House grounds, which includes the White House Ballroom and a helipad, Marine One takes off from the Ellipse instead of the South Lawn.
The investigation also found that there was insufficient line of sight to ensure communication between the radio transceiver sight and the Ellipse. According to The New York Times, there were no known radio frequency problems before the incident.
The Associated Press reported that a week before the president’s helicopter got too close to an Envoy Air jet near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, air traffic controllers and Marine One pilots met to discuss that controllers had not received the standard three-minute warning call before his flights. They planned to relay the radio calls through someone else if there were future problems, but that also failed on August 4, when there was a close call.
Communications problems resurfaced when air traffic controllers at Reagan Airport were unable to hear Marine One and had to call for assistance from a support helicopter just before takeoff.
“I can’t hear Marine One,” the air traffic controller told the support helicopter, according to the AP. “If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?”
Marine One was having trouble talking to ATC
After the incident earlier this month, technicians determined that the reason Marine One occasionally had trouble talking to the tower was because the helicopter had moved to a new location during construction. So the FAA moved the radio receiver from a neighborhood near the airport to the top of the tower at Reagan to solve the problem.
“Even though they were aware of some previous communication problems, they never got to the root cause,” aviation security expert Jeff Guzzetti said, according to the AP.
In a statement, the FAA said it acted immediately after the incident by moving the antenna “to improve communication” between the airport and the Marine One pilots.
Trump was not in danger
After the incident became public, the White House and the FAA insisted that the president was never in danger, even though Marine One was flying 0.82 miles apart laterally and about 700 feet vertically from the airliner. According to Forbes, FAA rules say that planes in Class B airspace must be at least 1.72 miles apart laterally or 500 feet vertically.
The incident involving Marine One comes a little over a year after a collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 near the busy airport killed 67 people.
After the fatal crash, the FAA decided that all takeoffs and landings at the airport would be halted whenever a helicopter flew by on a conflicting route. The airspace near the White House and Reagan is heavily congested with military and commercial aircraft.
