Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Tuesday he is working to fix telecom issues flagged after a military helicopter carrying President Donald Trump last week came too close to a passenger jet departing Reagan Washington National Airport.
The incident raised serious questions about why the passenger airplane was allowed to depart while Marine One was nearby, a time when commercial traffic is typically halted.
Following a January 2025 crash between a military helicopter and a commercial jet that killed 67 people, the Federal Aviation Administration barred mixed helicopter and jet traffic around the airport.
“There have been some telecom issues,” Duffy told reporters at Newark Liberty International Airport.
“That’s been now elevated,” he said, adding that he is working with the FAA on a fix with the White House.
Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford spoke to media at the New Jersey airport for an event marking the installation of a new surface movement radar used to improve runway safety.
The FAA is spending billions to replace outdated air traffic control telecom infrastructure and radar surveillance systems after a series of failures, including significant, serious outages covering Newark and Washington traffic and a 2023 failure of an FAA system that forced a brief nationwide ground stop.
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