Marine One Came Within A Mile Of Hitting Regional Jet Over DC, Corps Called Flight Routine
The second term of President Donald Trump could have ended the same way it began, with a fiery mid-air collision over Washington, D.C. between a helicopter and a regional jet. Marine One came within 0.8 miles of colliding with an American Airlines regional jet on Tuesday while flying Trump to Joint Base Andrews. The incident immediately conjured memories of the January 2025 mid-air collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet. The crash over the Potomac River killed all 67 people aboard both aircraft.
The cause of the two incidents may even be related. According to The New York Times, radio reception issues for air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport delayed them from clearing the airspace around the President's helicopter. Also, the Marine One crew tried three times to tell controllers that they were about to take off, but they weren't heard. Despite the FAA investigation, the White House is attempting to downplay the close call and stated Trump "was at no point in harm's way." The U.S. Marine Corps took things a step further in an emailed statement, "There were no 'close calls' with the routine Marine One movement."
The NTSB wanted to prevent something like this, but Congress scrapped the changes
The Trump administration's early Elon Musk-led efforts to dismantle the federal government included massive staffing cuts at the FAA. The decision immediately backfired with the fatal mid-air crash over the Potomac last year. The subsequent NTSB investigation found that a wide range of failures at the FAA led to the incident. In addition to the poor radio reception garbling communications, there was only one air traffic controller on duty in the tower at Reagan National. The NTSB recommended that military helicopters be required to fly around D.C. with location tracking technology, but Congress canned its implementation.
Since January 2025, the White House's focus has quickly shifted to dumping money into modernizing the country's air traffic control infrastructure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in July 2025 that he'll need $31.5 billion for the FAA's "Brand New Air Traffic Control System. If that sum wasn't eye-watering enough, Duffy asked for another $10 billion for AI air traffic control software earlier this year. The only thing the White House is more adamant about burning money on is lobbing a dwindling supply of missiles at Iran.