By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A hotline connecting the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers at Reagan Washington National Airport has been inoperable since March 2022, an FAA official told a Senate committee on Wednesday.
The U.S. Army said on May 5 that it was suspending helicopter training flights in the vicinity of the Pentagon after two passenger airline flights were forced to abort landings at Reagan because a Black Hawk helicopter was flying nearby.
On January 29, a Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) passenger jet near Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people.
Franklin McIntosh, the FAA’s deputy head of air traffic control, told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday that the agency would not allow the Pentagon to resume the helicopter flights until the hotline is fixed. He said the hotline was maintained by the Pentagon and the FAA had only recently learned it was out of service.
The Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion has temporarily halted training flights in and around the Pentagon while it determines what happened during the May 1 flight. The battalion is the Army unit responsible for such flights.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz said the FAA has been preparing to suspend the FAA’s letter of agreement between the Army and FAA that gives the Army the right to operate without having to ask for clearance for each flight before the Army acts.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
"We were extremely troubled by the incident that occurred," McIntosh said. "We were ready to weigh any option available that we could use... to bring safety measures and better behaviors from the DOD (Department of Defense)."
Separately, McIntosh said a backup telecommunications line at the facility handling flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on April 28 had failed when controllers lost communication for 90 seconds from the primary line.
"The second line did not kick in ... That’s what caused the disruption," McIntosh said. The FAA is adding a third redundant line to the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control to prevent further incidents.