Army pausing helicopter flights near Washington airport after close calls

WASHINGTON — The Army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.

The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following Thursday's close calls, two Army officials confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday. One official said the flights have been paused since Friday.

The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that were not publicly announced. The unit is continuing to fly in the greater Washington, D.C., region.

The unit had begun a return to flight within the last week, with plans to gradually increase the number of flights over the next four weeks, according to an Army document viewed by the AP.

Thursday's close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

They were instructed by air traffic control to ''perform go-arounds'' because of a ''priority air transport'' helicopter, according to an emailed statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The priority air transport helicopters of the 12th battalion provide transport service to top Pentagon officials. It was a Black Hawk priority air transport known as PAT25 that collided with the passenger jet in midair in January.

That crash was the worst U.S. midair disaster in more than two decades. In March, the FAA announced that helicopters would be prohibited from flying in the same airspace as planes near Reagan airport.

The NTSB and FAA are both investigating the latest close call with an Army helicopter.

The Army said after the latest incident that the UH-60 Blackhawk was following published FAA flight routes and air traffic control from Reagan airport when it was ''directed by Pentagon Air Traffic Control to conduct a ‘go-around,' overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with approved flight procedures.''

But helicopter traffic remains a concern around that busy airport. The FAA said that three flights that had been cleared for landing Sunday at Reagan were ordered to go around because a police helicopter was on an urgent mission in the area. All three flights landed safely on their second approaches.

The NTSB said after the January crash that there had been an alarming number of close calls near Reagan in recent years, and the FAA should have acted sooner.

Investigators have highlighted 85 close calls around Reagan airport in the three years before the crash that should have signaled a growing safety problem. FAA officials said they did analyze every close call but missed the alarming trend.

Since then, the FAA launched a review of data at airports nationwide with heavy helicopter traffic that identified safety concerns at the Las Vegas airport related to all the helicopter tours there. That review is ongoing.

Reuters first reported the pause in Army helicopter flights.

In New Jersey on Monday, flight delays and cancellations persisted at Newark Liberty International Airport. The FAA attributed arriving flight delays of nearly four hours to a combination of an air traffic controller shortage, thick cloud cover and antiquated air traffic control equipment that needs to be upgraded.

___

Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.