By Aaron Cooper, CNN
(CNN) — A “hotline” between air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Pentagon, intended to coordinate aircraft, has not worked since March 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration revealed in a congressional hearing Wednesday.
The FAA was not aware the direct line was broken until a May 1 incident where a helicopter circled the Pentagon and caused two flights to abort landings, Franklin McIntosh, the FAA’s deputy chief operating officer testified.
The airport was the site of the deadliest US airline crash in more than a decade when an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter on a training mission collided on January 29.
The unit flying the helicopter that circled the Pentagon was the same one involved in January’s midair collision, as CNN previously reported.
Military flights to the Pentagon have been suspended since the incident and will not resume until the hotline is fixed, McIntosh said.
The hotline is maintained by the Department of Defense and is one way for controllers to coordinate, in addition to using regular landline telephones.
Before the military halted flights, the FAA considered revoking the permission that allowed helicopters to operate in the DC airspace without explicit clearance.
“We were ready to deploy any option available that we could use or have that we felt was necessary to bring safety measures and better behaviors from the DOD,” McIntosh said.
CNN’s Pete Muntean contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
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