National Airport, Pentagon Hotline Had Been Disconnected for Three Years

The Washington Post

13:38 JST, May 15, 2025

A hotline connecting air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport and their counterparts at the Pentagon has been “inoperable” since March 2022, a Federal Aviation Administration official confirmed Wednesday, further evidence of poor safety coordination between federal agencies responsible for the airspace where a midair collision in January killed 67 people.

The line is maintained by the Defense Department, and the aviation agency was not aware of the outage during the three years it was down, Franklin McIntosh, the FAA’s deputy head of air traffic control, testified at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Aviation officials discovered the hotline wasn’t working after May 1, when controllers at National ordered two passenger jets to abandon landings because an Army helicopter was circling nearby at the Pentagon.

“We’re insisting on that line to be fixed before we resume any operations out of the Pentagon,” McIntosh said.

Ongoing disputes over how to ensure safety have led to unusual finger-pointing among Cabinet departments. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy has accused the military of violating safety protocols, while military officials have insisted they have followed the FAA’s restrictions.

Key senators joined in with their frustrations at Wednesday’s hearing of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

“The administration’s lack of a more aggressive, proactive mitigation approach is simply inexcusable,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), herself a former Black Hawk pilot. “FAA and DOD must coordinate better. We don’t need to wait for the completion of a lengthy investigation to know that.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said he had been unsuccessfully seeking more information about what happened from the military.

“They need to start giving answers to this committee and other committees because what happened was just unacceptable,” Sullivan said. “They really haven’t been that forthcoming.”

Maj. Montrell Russell, a spokesman for the Army, said it was working with the FAA to determine what repairs were needed. McIntosh said that he did not know how long it would take to restore the line but that he expected the military to “expedite that timeline.”

This month’s incident came just a week after a Virginia-based Army unit resumed flights in the capital region following the Jan. 29 crash, when an Army Black Hawk collided with an American Airlines regional jet arriving from Wichita.

In another fresh disclosure, McIntosh said that at the time of the May 1 airspace conflicts, responsibility in National’s tower for guiding helicopters and other local traffic was combined under one person – a consolidation of tasks also in place the night of the deadly crash. Combining the jobs can increase the workload on controllers, experts say.

After the crash, the FAA closed a helicopter route that passed along the Potomac River to the east of National and restricted helicopter traffic in an area around the airport. But military, police and medical helicopter flights have continued in the region, causing ongoing disruptions to passenger traffic. The Washington Post has identified at least two other flights to the Pentagon since the crash using the same looping route.

McIntosh testified that the FAA was continuing to weigh its procedures in hopes of getting the Defense Department to exhibit “better behaviors.”

Under questioning from Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas), McIntosh confirmed that after the May 1 incident, officials considered whether to suspend an agreement that allows the military to fly in the Washington area without receiving FAA clearance beforehand. Before the FAA took that step, however, the Army unit in Virginia announced that it would once again suspend helicopter flights to the Pentagon while it carried out a review.

“We were extremely troubled by the incident that occurred, especially in light of DCA and the events that led up to the accident,” McIntosh said, referring to National by its airport code. “We were ready to deploy any option that we could use or we felt was necessary.”

Yet McIntosh acknowledged the prolonged hotline outage also raised concerns about the FAA’s procedures. “I think the next question would be why were we not aware of it and insist on it being fixed?” McIntosh said.

Scott Dunham, a retired National Transportation Safety Board investigator, said it’s typical for nearby air traffic control facilities to have direct communications with one another.

McIntosh testified that the two facilities were still able to reach each other by normal phones. But Dunham said that should be a “last resort after the normal stuff breaks.”

Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA investigator, said the Army has been less transparent than civilian authorities since the crash – potentially due to the sensitivity of some of the missions it flies. But Guzzetti said the military will have to find a way to share more information.

“This fatal accident at DCA is shining a huge spotlight that the Army can’t get away from easily,” he said.

Wednesday’s hearing also examined the ongoing problems at Newark Liberty International Airport, which has faced days of delays caused by unreliable technology, a shortage of air traffic controllers and runway construction.

The Guardian reported Wednesday that while Duffy has insisted the airport remains safe to use, he also said in a radio interview that he had switched a flight his wife was taking to nearby LaGuardia Airport. The Transportation Department told the British outlet that the change was made for scheduling reasons, not because of safety concerns.