The United States Army has revealed that an army helicopter which lost contact with military air traffic controllers near the Pentagon earlier this month, was off-radar for about 20 seconds.As a result, two commercial jets, which were about to land at Washington’s Ronald Reagan airport, were forced to abort the landings. The incident occurred on May 1.“The handlers lost contact with the Black Hawk because a temporary control tower antenna was not set up in a location where it would be able to maintain contact with the helicopter as it flew low and rounded the Pentagon to land. The antenna was set up during construction of a new control tower and has now been moved to the roof of the Pentagon,” Brigadier General Matthew Braman, the head of Army aviation, told news agency AP. “Federal air traffic controllers inside the Washington airport also didn’t have a good fix on the location of the helicopter. The Black Hawk was transmitting data that should have given them its precise location. FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) officials told me in last week that the data the controllers were getting from multiple feeds and sensors was inconclusive,” Braman added.In the initial reporting on the aborted landings, an FAA official suggested the Black Hawk was on a “scenic route.”However, the US Army’s data shows the crew hewed closely to its approved flight path, directly up the I-395 highway corridor, also called “Route 5.” The chopper then rounded the Pentagon, home to the US Department of Defense, in Washington DC.FAA air traffic controllers at the Ronald Reagan airport subsequently aborted the landing of a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170.The aborted landings adde to general unease about continued close calls between government helicopters and commercial airplanes near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following a deadly mid-air collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter, which killed 67 people.In March, the aviation authority permanently restricted choppers from flying on the route where the collision occurred. After the May 1 incident, the US Army paused all flights into and out of the Pentagon as it works with the FAA to address safety issues.
