From Washington to Newark, recent aviation mishaps are prompting Congress to scrutinize safety protocols, revealing a pattern of miscommunication, unauthorized flights, and technical failures.
Senior Federal Aviation Administration officials on Wednesday testified before the Senate Commerce Committee about systemic vulnerabilities in air traffic control, safety oversight, and airport operations, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy faced questions from House lawmakers over the administration’s proposed aviation budget.
The hearings come amid a string of incidents shaking confidence in U.S. aviation. In January, a deadly midair collision near Reagan National Airport killed 67 people, the worst U.S. aviation disaster in nearly 25 years. Since then, reports of near-miss incidents and repeated radar outages at Newark Airport have raised fresh concerns. Severe staffing shortages and mounting delays have only intensified scrutiny of FAA oversight.
Here are four revelations Congress learned about air safety lapses:
Hotline between Pentagon and DCA has been down since 2022
A hotline linking air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport and the Pentagon has been out of service since March 2022, Deputy FAA Air Traffic Control chief Franklin McIntosh told senators Wednesday. Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, McIntosh said the issue only came to light after a recent incident forced two commercial flights to abort landings.
The FAA said Friday that around 2:30 p.m., air traffic controllers directed two inbound flights, Delta Flight 1671 from Orlando and Republic Airways Flight 5825 from Boston, to abort their landings after a Black Hawk helicopter headed to the Pentagon entered their approach path. The pilots executed a go-around, a routine safety procedure where an aircraft discontinues its landing and circles back for another attempt.
“We’re insisting on that line to be fixed before we resume any operations out of the Pentagon,” McIntosh told senators.
McIntosh did not provide a clear timeline for restoring the hotline, telling senators only that he anticipated the Defense Department would “expedite” the fix. In response to Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) question about how coordination was handled without the direct line, McIntosh said personnel relied on regular phone calls from the Pentagon helipad to the control tower.
This month’s incident renewed concerns about how the military and FAA coordinate operations in the congested airspace surrounding the airport after the deadly midair collision.
Army helicopter entered restricted airspace without clearance
McIntosh revealed that the Army helicopter veered off course around the Pentagon earlier this month and entered Class B airspace without the required clearance from air traffic control, forcing two flights to abort landings at Reagan National Airport.
“That aircraft is not supposed to enter class Bravo airspace without permission of air traffic control. That did not occur,” McIntosh said in response to a line of questioning from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL).
McIntosh said the Army helicopter incident on May 5 wasn’t unprecedented, but it did involve a likely pilot deviation. He praised the air traffic controllers for taking the right steps, directing two aircraft to go around, to maintain safe separation and prevent a more serious situation.
“We had an aircraft or a pilot that’s doing something that they’re not supposed to be doing, and those controllers did exactly what they should have,” he explained.
“So while we had, in my opinion as a pilot, a deviation, I do want to commend the controllers at the time for their actions, for ensuring that they have a timely go-around to those two aircraft,” McIntosh added.
Duckworth criticized ongoing coordination issues between the FAA and the Department of Defense near DCA and pressed the FAA to provide a copy of the relevant memorandum.
FAA considered revoking Army’s D.C. airspace access
Cruz pressed McIntosh on whether the agency was planning to suspend a long-standing agreement that allows the Army to fly in D.C. airspace without prior FAA clearance — asking if that was true, and what specific concerns prompted such a serious consideration.
“We were extremely troubled by the incident that occurred, especially in light of DCA and the events that led up to the accident, to be quite honest with you, we were ready to deploy any option available that we could use or had that we felt was necessary to bring safety measures and better behaviors from the DOD,” McIntosh said in response to Cruz.
“In this instance, to answer your question, we were ready to do any option available to include what you just spoke to, which was removing the ability to fly.”
McIntosh said he wasn’t certain if the FAA formally drafted an order to suspend the agreement but confirmed the idea was discussed, and noted the Defense Department chose to halt operations on its own following the May 5 incident.
Before the agency acted, the Virginia-based Army unit voluntarily halted its Pentagon-bound helicopter flights to conduct an internal review.
In March, the FAA permanently shut down a major flight route and restricted access to two smaller runways at the airport whenever helicopters on urgent missions are active nearby.
Backup data line failed at Newark before 90-second radar blackout
Newark Liberty Airport has been facing a host of air traffic control glitches, including an incident last week when radar screens went dark and controllers briefly lost the ability to see or communicate with aircraft in the area, marking the second such incident in recent weeks.
McIntosh said the 90-second disruption in Newark airspace happened when both the primary and backup radar data lines to the Philadelphia facility failed, despite the backup being designed to immediately take over if the main line went down.
“There’s two lines that provide data and transmission fields. The primary line that came in failed. We have a secondary, redundant line that provides the radar transmissions and our voice capabilities,” he explained, adding, “When we lost that first line, the second line did not kick in like it was designed to do. That’s what caused the disruption.”
Last year, the FAA shifted oversight of Newark’s airspace to Philadelphia in an effort to ease staffing shortages and manage heavy air traffic in the New York region. The switchover has been plagued by technical glitches and repeated failures in backup systems.
At a separate hearing in the House, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he rebooked a flight his wife was set to take through Newark to avoid delays, not because of safety concerns, as some reports had suggested.
“I moved her from Newark to LaGuardia, not for safety, but because I needed her flight to fly,” Duffy told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee. “Someone had clipped some audio of that and made it seem like I was talking about safety. I fly out of Newark all the time.”
Duffy blamed the Biden administration for the tech failures, pointing to its decision to shift oversight of Newark’s airspace from New York to Philadelphia last summer. He told the panel that the communications lines weren’t properly tested or secured during the transition, leading to further outages in October and November.
CRITICAL HOTLINE BETWEEN PENTAGON AND REAGAN WASHINGTON NATIONAL AIRPORT CUT OFF SINCE 2022
The incidents have amplified calls for a new sweeping plan unveiled by Duffy last week to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system.
The eight-page proposal outlines a nationwide reform of the air traffic control system, calling for the replacement of outdated radio communication tools with modern systems, swapping copper cables for high-speed fiber optics, and transitioning flight data management to fully digital platforms. It also prioritizes renovating aging control facilities and expanding advanced weather and surveillance technologies to underserved regions such as Alaska and the Caribbean.