Construction at the White House contributed to radio problems that resulted in Marine One's near-miss with a passenger jet, a preliminary report has found. Federal investigators said on Thursday that the construction work caused air traffic controllers to be unable to hear warning calls that Donald Trump's helicopter was preparing to take off. This led them to clear an airline jet to take off as Marine One lifted off earlier this month.
Communication failures before the incident
In the week leading up to the near-miss, air traffic controllers met with Marine One pilots to discuss not having received the standard three-minute warning call ahead of its flights, the preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report said. They planned to relay radio calls through someone else if there were future problems, but that was also unsuccessful on the day of the August 4 incident.
Communication issues came up again on Thursday, when air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were not able to hear Marine One and had to ask a support helicopter for help just before take-off. “I can’t hear Marine One,” an air traffic controller says to the support helicopter. “If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?”
Root cause discovered
Following the incident earlier this month, technicians discovered the reason Marine One was having trouble talking to the tower at times was because the helicopter shifted to a new location during the construction. The Federal Aviation Administration moved the radio receiver out of a neighbourhood near the airport and to the top of the tower at Reagan to fix the problem.
“Even though they were aware of some previous communications issues, they never got at the root cause,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told the Associated Press. A recording posted by ATC.com showed the Marine One pilot telling the tower it was "three minutes to lift" just like the 2013 agreement between the FAA and the military calls for. But the controller seemed surprised a few minutes later when it took off.
Controller cleared of fault
“Uh, Marine One, you said, uh, you’re proceeding as briefed?” the controller asked before giving directions and continuing: "OK, no three minutes, roger, proceed as briefed." Guzzetti told the agency he did not believe the controllers were at fault as they never heard Marine One's warnings. He added: "In this case, the controller did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not receive the transmission saying that they were three minutes away from taking off. So he had no reason to hold the airplane that was lining up and waiting."
