Pentagon Air Traffic Control Glitch Caused Two Planes to Abort D.C. Landings
Passenger planes aborted landings after the Pentagon lost contact with an Army helicopter earlier this month.
Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS
Newark International Airport isn’t the only airport battling ancient equipment problems.
A new report claims that the two commercial flights that were forced to abandon their landings near Washington, D.C., on May 1 were reacting to problems with military air traffic control.
According to The New York Times, Pentagon air traffic controllers lost contact with an Army Black Hawk helicopter for 20 critical seconds on May 1—an incident emblematic of deeper dysfunction in U.S. military airspace under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The May 1 scare occurred as the Black Hawk rounded the Pentagon, prompting air traffic controllers to wave away a Delta Airbus and a Republic Airways Embraer due to uncertainty about the chopper’s position. Army aviation head Gen. Matthew Braman revealed the details of the incident to the Associated Press. Braman said that the Comms blackout was caused by a poorly placed temporary antenna, which had only recently been moved to the Pentagon’s roof.
However, critics aren’t buying it. A former NTSB crash investigator accused the Army of sidestepping responsibility. “It just sounds like excuses,” he told the AP.
The near-miss comes off the back of a deadly January midair collision involving an Army helicopter and a passenger jet that killed 67 people. In response, the FAA banned helicopters from the air corridor where the crash occurred, and paused flights into the Pentagon.
Under Hegseth, a Trump loyalist and Fox News firebrand-turned-Defense Secretary, the Pentagon has been thrown into chaos. His administration has faced backlash over DEI rollbacks, religious favoritism, and the Signalgate leaks involving the sharing of sensitive military communications.
Meanwhile, critical infrastructure like air traffic control has faltered, with outdated tech blamed for recent blackouts and travel disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport. The issues have become so bad that the airport has registered a near 20 percent decline in arrivals and a 15 percent decline in departures.
This year has seen a number of unrelated crashes, with an air ambulance going down in Philadelphia in January, killing six, and a commuter plane crashing in Alaska, killing 10. Despite these high-profile accidents, the number of air incidents overall is slightly below average.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is pushing for urgent modernization, but near-misses like this are increasing calls for accountability before further tragedies unfold.
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