By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is reviewing an air-traffic safety incident Tuesday involving a military helicopter carrying President Donald Trump, the agency said.
“The FAA is investigating a safety incident involving Marine One but it didn’t appear to be a dangerous close call and the aircraft weren’t apparently converging,” the FAA said.
Trump’s Marine One helicopter took off from the White House Tuesday afternoon, but air-traffic controllers had not halted commercial flights at nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as required under a policy set last year following a fatal collision, two sources told Reuters.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the incident.
Trump’s helicopter lifted off from the Ellipse near the White House around 2:33 p.m. (1833 GMT), on his way to Joint Base Andrews for a trip to Los Angeles, according to a pool report.
A source told Reuters that Envoy Air 3742 — a regional E170 jet bound for Pensacola, Florida — departed at 2:34 p.m. and was involved in the apparent loss of separation incident with Marine One. Envoy is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines, which did not immediately comment.
FAA rules require aircraft to remain separated by at least 1.5 miles horizontally and 500 feet vertically around airports. The sources said it appeared Marine One and the plane did not maintain separation. One said it appears they were not converging during the incident.
Both Trump’s helicopter and the jet landed without incident.
Two sources told Reuters the FAA is planning to convene a Safety Review Team into the incident. The White House did not immediately comment.
Another regional flight — Republic 4700 — was 3 miles (5 km) from Reagan at the time of the incident and was sent around out of caution, the other source said. The Republic Embraer 175 operating on behalf of American had departed from Raleigh-Durham and looped around the airport before landing at 2:52 p.m., according to FlightAware.
The FAA imposed permanent restrictions on helicopter operations around Washington’s Reagan National Airport after a fatal January 2025 mid-air collision of an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in January series of systemic failures by the FAA led to the collision, citing the agency decision to allow helicopters to travel close to the airport with no safeguards to separate them from airplanes.
After the crash, the FAA has barred mixed helicopter and jet traffic around the airport, and when Marine One is in flight around the airport, commercial traffic is typically halted. The FAA in March barred the use of visual separation to handle helicopter traffic near major airports.
FAA air traffic control is typically given at least three minutes’ notice before Marine One departs to halt traffic from Reagan.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Fabiola Arámburo in Mexico City; Editing by Tom Hogue and Lincoln Feast)
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