“Was there an actual aircraft about 500 feet below us?,” a pilot can be heard asking air traffic control in audio obtained by WUSA9.
WASHINGTON — Flight collision warnings rang out on a Delta flight carrying 137 people during a close call with a U.S. Air Force jet Friday afternoon just after taking off at Reagan National Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed Friday night.
Only a few hundred feet separated the two aircraft while flying south of DCA at around 3:15 p.m., according to air traffic control audio obtained from LiveATC.net and flight data from Flightradar24.com.
“Was there an actual aircraft about 500 feet below us?,” a Delta pilot can be heard asking air traffic control.
“Affirmative,” an air traffic controller responds.
Delta Flight 2983 had been departing out of DCA for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota on Friday afternoon, with a scheduled arrival of 4:36.
The U.S. Air Force confirmed to WUSA9 that four T-38 aircraft had been in the area for a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. Those jets took off from and landed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia Friday afternoon.
The FAA saying Friday night that they would investigate why the aircraft were so close.
“The Delta aircraft received an onboard alert that another aircraft was nearby. Air traffic controllers issued corrective instructions to both aircraft,” the FAA posted to their website Friday. “The FAA will investigate.”
WUSA9 spoke to Robert Katz, a commercial pilot and flight instructor with 43 years of experience who said these incidents are part of a larger problem at Reagan National Airport.
“There’s just too much traffic in and out of DCA,” Katz explained. “The volume of traffic is just causing DCA to burst at the seams.”
He said there are three runways at National Airport designed for commercial planes. Katz suggested retiring two of them, which he acknowledged won’t be the popular solution.
“Delayed arrivals and departures, more go arounds, more expense to the airlines,” Katz said. “Everybody’s going to complain about it.”
But for now, the veteran pilot recommends if you want to be safe, choose a different airport.
“Really when it comes to safety, everybody needs to go to Dulles or to Baltimore,” he said, “because these are modern expanded airports with long runways, a lot of clear airspace.”
Friday afternoon’s close call happened over the Potomac River not far from the site of the midair collision in January that killed 67 people.
There were 131 passengers on Friday’s Delta flight aboard an Airbus A319, along with three flight attendants and two pilots. The flight arrived safely in Minnesota Friday afternoon.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) vowed to grill the U.S. Department of Defense of about the flight that had been headed toward her state.
“Why are your planes flying 500 feet below passenger jets full of Minnesotans headed from DCA to my state(?),” the Minnesota senator posted on social media Friday.
A spokesperson for Delta said that Flight 2983 had followed all protocols during its Friday afternoon flight.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people,” Delta said in a statement. “That’s why the flight crew followed procedures to maneuver the aircraft as instructed.”
On Thursday, Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau confirmed during a Senate hearing that a flurry of false mid-air collision alerts had disrupted flights at DCA earlier this month were caused by drone testing.
