U.S. national airport, Pentagon hotline disconnected for 3 years: FAA

NEW YORK, May 14 (Xinhua) -- A hotline connecting air traffic controllers at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and their counterparts at the Pentagon had been "inoperable" since March 2022, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official confirmed on Wednesday.

The line is maintained by the Defense Department, and the aviation agency was not aware of the outage, Franklin McIntosh, the deputy head of air traffic control, testified at a Senate hearing. Aviation officials learned of the issue after controllers at National, in Arlington, Virginia, had to order two flights to abandon landing attempts this month due to an Army helicopter heading to the Pentagon.

"We're insisting on that line to be fixed before we resume any operations out of the Pentagon," McIntosh said.

This month's incident came a week after a Virginia-based Army unit said it was resuming flights in the capital region after a Jan. 29 crash between one of its helicopters and an American Airlines regional jet. The midair collision killed 67 people.

McIntosh confirmed that after the incident, officials weighed whether to suspend an agreement that allows the military to fly in the Washington area without receiving clearance beforehand from the FAA. Before the FAA took that step, however, the Army unit in Virginia announced that it would once again suspend helicopter flights to the Pentagon while it carried out a review.