Marine One’s Close Call With Commercial Jet May Have Been Linked To White House Construction
Trump was “never in danger” during the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
On August 28, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report indicating that construction work at the White House played a role in the close call between President Donald Trump's helicopter and an Envoy Air passenger plane over Washington earlier in the month. The incident occurred on August 4 after Trump took off from a temporary site on the Ellipse, during the construction of a permanent helipad inside the White House grounds.
The NTSB's preliminary report stated that the helicopter and the passenger plane were separated by only 0.82 miles horizontally and 700 feet vertically when the close pass happened, which falls short of the required minimum separation of 1.5 miles horizontally and 500 feet vertically. Both the White House and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have claimed that Trump was not in danger during the incident.
The investigators discovered that the air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport failed to receive the first radio transmission indicating the presidential helicopter's imminent departure. Moreover, the second transmission was broken and unreadable. The report also pointed out that there was inadequate line-of-sight to ensure communications between the radio transmitter/receiver sight and The Ellipse, where Marine One was temporarily operating while construction was ongoing at the White House.
This incident echoes a similar collision that occurred in January, where a passenger plane approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter, resulting in the deaths of 67 people.
Written by urgent.news from Malay Mail's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
