WASHINGTON — A hotline connecting the Pentagon with air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has been “inoperable” since March 2022, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official revealed during a stunning Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill.
The downed line was only noticed after a tragic mid-air collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a regional passenger plane over the Potomac River killed 67 people on Jan. 29, FAA Air Traffic Organization deputy COO Franklin McIntosh told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
McIntosh claimed to panel chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that the Defense Department was supposed to “maintain” the direct line, but never told air traffic controllers that it was down.
“We were not aware — but we became aware after that event,” McIntosh told Cruz. “And now that we became aware of that event we’re insisting upon that line to be fixed before we resume any operations out of the Pentagon.”
Asked when the hotline would be back up, McIntosh said defense officials were expected “to expedite that timeline” — but gave no further details.
The dead hotline isn’t the only way for DC air traffic controllers and military personnel to get in touch, according to McIntosh.
“We still have landline abilities. We can make phone calls,” he said. “From the helipad to the operation where the supervisor or even the command — or the controller in charge can answer.
“So we’re aware of the activity. And if there was a departure clearance needed, we’d be able to relay it,” he added.
“We were extremely troubled by the incident,” McIntosh went on, noting that other near-misses between military helicopters and commercial airlines nearly forced the FAA last month to void its agreement with the Pentagon allowing defensive craft to fly in DC airspace.
“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 in this instance,” he said.
Air traffic controllers were also juggling the responsibility of monitoring both military and passenger aircraft on both the night of the collision — and in another near-fatal incident from late April in which a helicopter caused two near-misses with airliners and passed approximately 200 feet from one jet, the official confirmed.
In March, the aviation agency announced it was permanently restricting military helicopters from flying on the same route the Black Hawk had taken on that deadly night in late January.
McIntosh told Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the panel, that the helicopter in the April incident did not have “landing clearance” from air traffic controllers and had to circle the Pentagon repeatedly.
“This is where safety drift starts to happen,” he said. “And that is a question that we are asking.”
“A departing flight came within 200 vertical feet of an Air Force jet conducting a flyover of Arlington Cemetery,” Duckworth recounted. “More recently, another Army helicopter from the same brigade involved in January’s deadly crash came within 200 feet of a commercial flight near the Pentagon.”
“These are foreseeable risks. And in the aftermath of the worst deadly aviation incident on US soil since the horrific Colgan Air crash, the administration’s lack of a more aggressive, proactive mitigation approach is simply inexcusable,” she fumed.
The National Transportation Safety Board tracked more than 15,000 incidents in which aircraft came within a nautical mile of each other between October 2021 and December 2024.
The Pentagon directed queries by The Post to the US Army, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
