Federal investigators are reportedly focusing on mistakes by the control tower in their probe of a near-miss between a Delta passenger jet and a flight of military jets last month at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
On March 28, air traffic controllers cleared Delta Air Lines flight 2983 to take off from the airport as four military jets were inbound and heading towards Arlington National Cemetery for a flyover, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Sources familiar with the incident told CNN that the air traffic controllers did not pause departures for five minutes ahead of the military jets flying over, as had been planned beforehand.
The Delta flight got an onboard alert that the jets were nearby, and air traffic controllers were also able to instruct both sets of aircraft to correct their courses and stay away from each other.
But the jets actually came within 3,900 feet of the passenger plane on a horizontal axis, with just 100 feet of height separation, a source briefed on the incident told CNN.
The close call came nearly two months after another military aircraft, an Army Black Hawk helicopter, struck an American Airlines plane landing at Reagan National on the night of Jan. 29. All 67 people aboard both aircraft died in the incident.
It also came just a day after one of the employees at the Reagan National air traffic control tower, Damon Gaines, 39, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, was arrested over a fight between air traffic controllers so fierce that it left blood splattered on a control console.
Last week, the FAA announced it was looking into operations and staffing at the Reagan National tower and that it would be hiring more supervisors. The FAA also planned to have a critical incident stress management team visit staffers in the early part of April to see how they were handling the aftermath of the Jan. 29 collision and the extra scrutiny it has brought.
