A passenger jet that came too close to Trump’s Marine One helicopter highlights continuing air traffic control problems

Washington, DC (CNN) — A year and a half after a deadly midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport killed 67 people, dozens of safety recommendations have been issued, and some changes were implemented, but problems with aircraft getting too close together persist.

Last Tuesday, planes continued to take off as Marine One lifted off from the Ellipse, just south of the White House, with President Donald Trump onboard. At least one American Airlines regional jet got within the protective bubble around the helicopter. Flights are typically halted from the nearby airport when the President is taking off.

“There was momentary loss of separation after which the aircraft continued to move away from one another,” the Federal Aviation Administration said, reaffirming the President was never in danger.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday the breakdown resulted from a telecommunications problem.

“We’ve found at a staff level, between the Marine One team and the FAA, there had been some telecom issues,” Duffy told CNN at a news conference at Newark Liberty International Airport. “We are resolving that, and our teams are working very well together.”

In a recording of air traffic control audio, the pilots onboard Marine One can be heard repeating they will be taking off soon, but the control tower was apparently unable to hear the transmission.

The FAA convened a safety review panel to investigate the incident and agency leadership met with the White House Military Office helicopter unit, the FAA said in a statement on Tuesday.

“While the President was never in danger and the two vehicles were never converging, the group will enhance coordination on three-minute lift notification and boost signal frequencies,” the agency said.

It is the latest in a series of problems at the airport located within sight of the buildings where the nation’s laws are made.

While the incidents are all very different, they illustrate the challenges of managing congested airspace with heightened security, old equipment, staffing shortages, and new legislation aimed at fixing these problems stuck in Congress.

On January 29, 2025, 67 people died when an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission and American Airlines regional jet landing at the airport collided over the Potomac River. The deadly crash increased scrutiny of how helicopters are allowed to fly in the Washington DC airspace.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s final report concluded the crash was caused by a helicopter route too close to where planes were landing, the FAA not regularly evaluating close call data, relying too much on pilots watching for other aircraft, and tower controllers losing situational awareness due to a high workload.

But the problems extended beyond the deadly collision.

In March of last year, an air traffic controller was charged with assault and battery after an “incident” in the control tower. The NTSB revealed in a later hearing that the fight happened as they were in another part of the building investigating the midair collision.

The next day, a close call occurred between a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 taking off and a flight of US Air Force T-38 jets flying over the neighboring Arlington National Cemetery. A review of tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed the T-38s flying past the airport going more than 350 miles per hour, 800 feet above the ground.

In May of last year, an Army helicopter that was instructed to fly over the Pentagon helipad forced controllers to order two flights to abort landings at Reagan National Airport to prevent collisions.

Days later, a congressional hearing revealed a “hotline” between air traffic controllers at the airport and the Pentagon, intended to coordinate aircraft, had not worked since March 2022. The FAA was not aware it was broken until the incident, according to Franklin McIntosh, the FAA’s deputy chief operating officer.

While problems like these can happen at control towers across the country, the deadly collision has put a spotlight on Reagan National Airport, according to Dave Riley, who worked as an air traffic controller for more than 30 years.

“Post the midair, tensions are high,” Riley said. “Scrutiny is extreme. Everything that (Reagan National Airport controllers) say is under the microscope. Everything they do is being scrutinized. So, there’s a lot of pressure there.”

Collision warnings were in the data

After the deadly collision, NTSB investigators uncovered 15,214 “near miss events” at Reagan National Airport between 2021 and 2024, where aircraft were within one nautical mile of each other, with a vertical separation of less than 400 feet.

During those same four years, there were 85 times where aircraft were less than 1,500 feet apart, and within 200 feet of altitude.

The “data was there” before the crash, Duffy said, but “it wasn’t effectively analyzed to see that we had this kind of risk.”

Close calls between helicopters and planes were not unique to Reagan National Airport.

Last year, the FAA said Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas was identified as having “several immediate issues” with helicopters getting dangerously close to passenger jets.

“All these types of movements around the country are very closely considered,” Riley said. “You try to put those types of helicopters and airplanes in places where they won’t conflict with the regular traffic.”

An AI analysis of safety data led to new nationwide rules requiring helicopter pilots around busy airports be in contact with air traffic control and not rely on looking for nearby planes.

“We identified an overreliance on pilot ‘see and avoid’ operations that contribute to safety events involving helicopters and airplanes,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in March.

Duffy reiterated on Tuesday that “complicated airspaces” like Reagan National Airport will not have helicopters crossing the paths of landing jets.

“Just to be clear, after we had the crash at DCA, we have prohibited cross traffic between helicopters and airplanes, unless it’s presidential movement or if it’s law enforcement or first responder movement,” he said. “But even when that happens, we shut down the airspace.”

Lessons from the deadly midair collision

Following the January 2025 midair collision at Reagan National Airport, helicopters were also banned from a four-mile stretch of the neighboring Potomac River when flights were landing. So far, this is the only one of the NTSB recommendations stemming from the crash that has been resolved and marked closed by the agency.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said more needs to be done.

“We are no closer today to addressing many of the serious safety gaps that contributed to this terrible tragedy,” she wrote in a statement last month.

NTSB investigators formally made 50 safety recommendations in the final report, more than half of which were directed to the FAA.

The agency has testified before Congress that it is working on many of them and has posted a timeline tracking recommendations directed at the FAA on its website.

In addition to the rules prohibiting cross traffic, steps taken include reducing the number of planes allowed to land each hour at Reagan National Airport from 36 to 30, the FAA said. More controllers were also assigned to work in the tower.

“We increased the number of authorized certified professional controllers, support managers, support staff specialists, operations managers and operations supervisors, while simultaneously filling those additional positions,” the FAA said in January.

However, the FAA said not all changes can be acted upon quickly.

“Some recommendations may take several years to implement due to external factors, such as rulemaking and collective bargaining,” the FAA timeline read.

Proposed laws in Congress have also stalled.

Lawmakers push for better technology

The NTSB found “limitations” of “collision alerting systems on both aircraft” contributed to the crash at Reagan National Airport and recommended requiring improvements to the technology and mandates that it be used.

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B, is a radio signal broadcast by an aircraft that includes key location details, including altitude and speed. If a collision is about to happen it can warn a pilot and give them instructions to avoid it.

At the time of the collision, the American Airlines regional jet was sending out a signal, but the Army helicopter that collided with it did not have its system turned on.

Neither pilot was able to receive information, which is part of a newer system called “ADS-B In” that would display nearby aircraft positions for pilots in the cockpit.

A Senate bill, called the ROTOR Act would have required ADS-B In on most aircraft and require most pilots to fly while transmitting ADS-B signals. The bill passed by the Senate, but the House of Representatives rejected the measure in February.

A House committee proposed a competing bill, called the ALERT Act, which it says addresses all 50 NTSB recommendations, but would not require ADS-B In on every aircraft.

“Congress has taken significant, historic steps to address many of the Board’s recommendations, and that progress deserves recognition,” Homendy said in July. “But the work is not finished. Congress left for August recess without action on a final bill, and we urge they work through differences during this recess so that a final package can be voted on when Congress returns in September.”

Homendy has warned that without making changes in regulations, operating procedures and laws, close calls and incidents like what happened with Marine One could continue to occur.

“It’s time for action that was promised months ago; we owe it to the victims, to the families who continue to grieve their loss, and to the millions of people who rely on the safety of our aviation system every day,” Homendy said.

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CNN’s Pete Muntean contributed to this report.