Delta plane and Air Force jet ordered to maneuver to avoid collision near DCA airport
Federal aviation officials are investigating a close call between a Delta Air Lines passenger plane and an Air Force jet outside Washington, D.C., that triggered a collision warning and “corrective instructions” from air traffic controllers. The incident came nearly two months after a fatal collision at the same airport between an airliner and an Army helicopter.
The latest incident, Friday afternoon, occurred while four U.S. Air Force T-38 Talons were en route to Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia for a flyover, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. A T-38 Talon is a two-seat supersonic jet used to train pilots, according to the Air Force.
Around 3:15 p.m. local time, Delta Flight 2983, bound for Minneapolis, took off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Soon after, an alert sounded off inside the cockpit of the passenger plane, indicating that another aircraft was nearby, the FAA said. In response, air traffic controllers issued “corrective instructions” to both aircraft, the agency said.
The FAA said it will be investigating the incident. Delta said its flight crew properly followed instructions from the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). The airline said it will cooperate with regulators to review the incident.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people,” Delta said in a statement. The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident comes nearly two months after an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided outside of DCA airport, killing 67 people. In response, the FAA announced it would drastically limit helicopter flights near the airport.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the flight patterns around DCA “an intolerable risk,” pointing to how helicopters and commercial planes operate in short distances to each other within an already busy airspace.
The NTSB’s preliminary report on the deadly crash found that, between October 2021 and December 2024, there were more than 15,000 occurrences of close calls between commercial planes and helicopters, or when two aircraft were separated less than 6,100 feet laterally and less than 400 feet vertically.
In that three-year span, there were 85 recorded incidents where they were apart by less than 1,500 feet laterally and less than 200 feet vertically.
Tracking data from FlightRadar24 on Friday showed that there was a brief moment when both the Delta plane and military aircraft were flying above the same area of the Potomac River near Alexandria’s Potomac Yard. Two pilots, three flight attendants and 131 passengers were on the Delta Airbus A319.
According to CNN, which first reported the incident and cited LiveATC.net, one of the Delta pilots asked air traffic controllers on Friday, “On that departure … was there an actual aircraft about 500 ft below us as we came off of DCA?”
On Friday night, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said the incident was “unbelievably dangerous,” adding that she plans to reach out to the Pentagon.
“My first call to Department of Defense tomorrow: why are your planes flying 500 feet below passenger jets full of Minnesotans headed from DCA to my state,” she wrote on X.
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