A hotline between DC air traffic control and the Pentagon has not worked for years: NPR

A hotline that provided direct communication between the Pentagon and the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has not worked since March 2022, a Federal Aviation Administration official confirmed on Wednesday.

Public recognition came during a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, when the Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas interviewed FAA officials on the fatal collision of January between a Black Hawk helicopter of the army and a regional jet of American Airlines who approached the airport for landing. Sixty-seven people were killed in this accident.

Franklin J. McIntosh, Director of Deputy Operation of the FAA, said that the agency did not know at the time of the accident that the hotline did not work.

“We were not aware, but we became aware after this event, and now that we have become aware of this event, we insist on this line to be corrected before resuming Pentagon operations,” he said.

The FAA declared in a statement at NPR that a “dedicated direct line of access” between the airport and the Heliport of the Pentagon army “has been released since 2022 due to the construction of a new tower in the Pentagon. The two installations continue to communicate by phone for coordination.”

The army did not respond to requests for comments.

An army unit interrupted training flights in the national capital region – which includes Washington, DC and areas neighboring Maryland and Virginia – on May 5, less than two weeks after taking over the flights following a break in response to the January accident.

This decision occurred after two commercial planes had to interrupt their landings in DCA on May 1, because an army helicopter on a training mission had too close to their flight trajectory.

Margaret Wallace, professor of Florida Institute of Technology who teaches air traffic control, said it was common for air traffic control facilities to have other critical offices, such as meteorological agencies, government buildings and military facilities.

“You just press a button, and it sounds directly to this installation or this agency with which they must coordinate,” she said.

Wallace, who was also an air traffic controller in the US Air Force, said Hotline can be useful for communicating with people who are not on radio communications that controllers use. “Perhaps he is the commander of an air base. He is not sitting there listening to radios, but it is a direct line for him. Or a direct line in the White House,” she said.

During the hearing on Wednesday, when Cruz asked when the hotline is working again, McIntosh said he expects the Ministry of Defense “accelerating this calendar so that they can start their operations”.