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| A plane approaches Reagan National Airport (AP) |
Chief Justice John Roberts, in a brief U.S. Supreme Court order that provided no reasoning behind it, essentially gave Donald Trump carte blanche to do whatever he wants with the White House for an undetermined amount of time. That raises this question: Are Trump and his loyalists competent enough to handle such a responsibility? We have new evidence that the answer is a resounding no.
Earlier this month, air-traffic controllers cleared an airline jet to take off at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. (DCA), while Trump's helicopter, Marine One, was preparing to lift off, according to a report at Associated Press (AP). Was that a problem? The neighborhood between Reagan National and the White House is congested with commercial aircraft, so air-traffic controllers are supposed to receive a warning call three minutes before Marine One takes off. But ongoing construction at the White House on Trump's ballroom/military bunker project apparently caused a communication problem that led to the helicopter and the airline jet coming closer than expected to each other.
initial accounts indicate neither Trump nor anyone else was in danger, but reporting by AP's Josh Funk suggests there was enough confusion, and a few missteps, that the situation could have turned dangerous at a number of key points. And much of the confusion was caused by White House construction that Trump initiated in fall 2025 without authorization from Congress, as required by law per 40 U.S.C. § 8106. Under the headline "White House construction contributed to radio problems that let Trump copter come close to jet," AP's Funk writes:
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.
Funk provides details about a moment that characterized the confusion that took hold at times as the incident unfolded. Reagan National holds the distinction of having the single busiest commercial runway at a U.S. airport. That made the air-traffic controllers' jobs, already demanding, even more challenging during this event. Funk writes:
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.
Funk notes that Trump's ballroom/bunker is not the only project contributing to confusion. In fact, the White House has become a veritable construction zone under the Trump regime -- featuring the kind of heavy machinery, moving equipment, and loud noise that can create unfamiliar and unsafe conditions:
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 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.
That the Trump incident involved a helicopter, Reagan International, and a challenging air-traffic control environment raised the specter of the January 2025 crash that was the deadliest U.S. air crash in more than two decades, Funk notes:
Having both the jet and Trump's helicopter in the air at the same time 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.
How close did the jet and Trump's helicopter get to each other? Funk has details:
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.
It appears the pilots of Marine One handled the situation just as they should have. But that still did not keep confusion from entering the equation, apparently because White House construction contributed to cloudy communications. Funk writes:
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.”
An expert close to the situation refused to point fingers at anyone connected to the Trump incident. His primary message seemed to be this: Everyone involved -- pilots, controllers, administrators, and more -- do their best to handle life-and-death situations in conditions that often can be imperfect. Funk writes:
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.
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