White House construction contributed to radio problems that let Trump
copter come close to jet
[August 28, 2026]
By JOSH FUNK
The ongoing White House construction contributed to radio problems that
kept air traffic controllers from hearing calls warning that President
Donald Trump's helicopter was getting ready to take off, so they cleared
an airline jet to take off just as Marine One took to the air earlier
this month, federal investigators said Thursday.
The week before the president's helicopter got too close to that Envoy
Air jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, air traffic
controllers and Marine One pilots met to discuss controllers not
receiving the standard three-minute warning call ahead of Marine One
flights, according to a preliminary report from the National
Transportation Safety Board. They made plans to relay radio calls
through someone else if there were future problems but that was also
unsuccessful on the day of the Aug. 4 incident.
Communication issues came up again on Thursday, when air traffic
controllers at the Reagan airport weren't able to hear Marine One and
had to ask a support helicopter for help just before takeoff.
“I can’t hear Marine One," an air traffic controller says to the support
helicopter. "If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?”
A little over a minute later, communication was functioning normally
again for the afternoon flight to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington,
according to recordings posted by ATC.com. It was not immediately clear
what caused the brief issue.
Since mid-July, Trump’s helicopter has been lifting off from the
Ellipse, the park south of the White House, while construction has been
going on for a new helipad behind the White House. Trump on Thursday was
leaving the White House to head to Texas for a Republican National
Committee event and present an award to the Artemis II astronauts.
After the incident earlier this month, technicians discovered that the
reason Marine One was having trouble talking to the tower at times was
because the helicopter shifted to a new location during the
construction. So the Federal Aviation Administration moved the radio
receiver out of a neighborhood near the airport and to the top of the
tower at Reagan to fix the problem.
“Even though they were aware of some previous communications issues,
they never got at the root cause,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti
said.
The FAA said in a statement that it took immediate action after the
incident by moving that antenna “to improve communications” between the
airport and Marine One pilots.
The White House didn't immediately respond to the preliminary report,
although the ongoing NTSB investigation does limit what it can say about
the incident.
A deadly crash in 2025 prompted new safety procedures
Having both the jet and helicopter in the air at the same time also
seemed to violate safety procedures put in place after last year’s
midair collision near the busy airport that killed 67 people, but
officials stressed that the president was never in danger. The Pentagon
also has a longstanding agreement with the FAA to provide controllers
with a three-minute warning before the president’s helicopter takes off
that predates last year’s crash.
The NTSB said recordings from the tower showed that the controllers
never heard the calls from Marine One's pilot that day warning that the
helicopter was getting ready to take off, but separate recordings posted
by ATC.com show the helicopter did make those calls.
The helicopter pilots tried to relay their three-minute call through the
helicopter facility at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, but that was also
unsuccessful.
The FAA decided after an airliner collided with an Army Black Hawk
helicopter on Jan. 29, 2025, that all takeoffs and landings at the
airport would be halted anytime a helicopter passes by on a conflicting
route. The airspace near the White House and Reagan is heavily congested
with military and commercial aircraft.
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President Donald Trump, left, walks from Marine One to board Air
Force One, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., en
route to South Carolina. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The FAA has acknowledged that the helicopter and airliner briefly got
too close before the two aircraft started to move away from each other.
The airplane quickly climbed above the helicopter after Marine One’s
pilots saw the plane and paused until it safely left the area.
The NTSB said preliminary estimates show the helicopter and plane were
just over 0.8 mile (1.3 kilometers) apart laterally and about 700 feet
(215 meters) apart vertically at their closest. The crew of the Envoy
Air flight told investigators they received a traffic warning from their
collision avoidance system right after they took off, but they never saw
the helicopter.
The controllers didn't hear Marine One's warnings
The official FAA recordings from the tower at Reagan did not include the
warnings that Marine One was getting ready to head to Andrews Air Force
Base with the president aboard that day.
A recording posted by ATC.com showed the Marine One pilot telling the
tower that the helicopter was “three minutes to lift” just like the 2013
agreement between the FAA and the military calls for. But the controller
seemed surprised a few minutes later when the helicopter took off.
“Uh, Marine One, you said, uh, you’re proceeding as briefed?” the
controller asked before giving the helicopter directions and commenting,
“OK, no three minutes, roger, proceed as briefed.”
After the controller warned the helicopter about the plane taking off,
the Marine One pilot said he saw the traffic and declared, “We’ll be
doing a momentary delay.”
Guzzetti, who is a former crash investigator for both the NTSB and FAA,
said he doesn't fault the controllers because they never heard Marine
One's warnings. And once they did realize the helicopter was taking off,
they quickly warned the pilots and ordered another plane coming in to
Reagan to abort landing and circle around.
“In this case, the controller did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not
receive the transmission saying that they were three minutes away from
taking off. So he had no reason to hold the airplane that was lining up
and waiting,” Guzzetti said.
After last year’s midair collision, it became clear that poor
communication between air traffic controllers and the military had been
a longstanding issue. During a congressional hearing, it came out that a
hotline connecting the Pentagon to the tower at Reagan hadn’t been
working for more than three years, and the FAA hadn’t even realized it.
The NTSB said that after this incident involving Marine One, FAA
technicians determined that there wasn't adequate line of sight between
the radio receiver at the airport and the location where the helicopter
takes off at the White House. So those radios were moved from the
neighborhood where they had been located to the top of the tower at
Reagan. Subsequent tests showed the radios working well after that
change.
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Associated Press writers Hallie Golden in Seattle and Michelle Price in
Washington contributed to this report.
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