WASHINGTON — The Military is pausing helicopter flights close to a Washington airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings final week due to an Military Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.
The commander of the twelfth Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following Thursday’s shut calls, two Military officers confirmed to The Related Press on Monday. One official mentioned the flights have been paused since Friday.
The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.
The officers spoke on the situation of anonymity to offer particulars that weren’t publicly introduced. The unit is constant to fly within the larger Washington, D.C., area.
The unit had begun a return to flight inside the final week, with plans to regularly enhance the variety of flights over the subsequent 4 weeks, based on an Military doc seen by the AP.
Thursday’s shut name concerned a Delta Air Strains Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, based on the Nationwide Transportation Security Board.
They had been instructed by air site visitors management to “carry out go-arounds” due to a “precedence air transport” helicopter, based on an emailed assertion from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The precedence air transport helicopters of the twelfth battalion present transport service to high Pentagon officers. It was a Black Hawk precedence air transport generally known as PAT25 that collided with the passenger jet in midair in January.
That crash was the worst U.S. midair catastrophe in additional than twenty years. In March, the FAA introduced that helicopters would be prohibited from flying in the same airspace as planes close to Reagan airport.
The NTSB and FAA are each investigating the most recent shut name with an Military helicopter.
The Military mentioned after the most recent incident that the UH-60 Blackhawk was following printed FAA flight routes and air site visitors management from Reagan airport when it was “directed by Pentagon Air Site visitors Management to conduct a ‘go-around,’ overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with accredited flight procedures.”
However helicopter site visitors stays a priority round that busy airport. The FAA said that three flights that had been cleared for touchdown Sunday at Reagan had been ordered to go round as a result of a police helicopter was on an pressing mission within the space. All three flights landed safely on their second approaches.
The NTSB mentioned after the January crash that there had been an alarming variety of shut calls close to Reagan lately, and the FAA ought to have acted sooner.
Reuters first reported the pause in Military helicopter flights.
In New Jersey on Monday, flight delays and cancellations continued at Newark Liberty International Airport. The FAA attributed arriving flight delays of almost 4 hours to a mixture of an air site visitors controller scarcity and thick cloud cowl.
___
Related Press author Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.
© Copyright 2025 Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
