Hotline between military and air traffic controllers in Washington hasn't worked for over 3 years

A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn’t worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S.
A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn’t worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S. Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January’s deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn’t even know the hotline hadn’t been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The Army said in a statement Wednesday that is it “working with the FAA to resolve the direct communications line between the Pentagon pad tower and the DCA tower and determine what repairs are required to restore services.” DCA is the code for Reagan airport.
It said the Army “continues to restrict flights to the Pentagon pad to only mission essential operations until the line is repaired or improved communication procedures are implemented and accepted by the FAA.”
The FAA said in a statement that the dedicated direct access line between air traffic controllers at Reagan and the Pentagon’s Army heliport hasn’t worked since 2022 because of the construction of a new tower at the Pentagon. But the FAA said “the two facilities continue to communicate via telephone for coordination.”
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