The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the United States government agency that investigates aviation accidents, notified Brazil on Thursday (27) that it has opened an investigation into an incident involving Marine One, the helicopter carrying President Donald Trump, and a commercial Embraer E170 jet. The incident took place on August 4 near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and was classified by the NTSB as a loss of separation, the technical term for two aircraft coming closer than the allowed safety margin.
According to G1, the aircraft came within just over 1.5 kilometers of each other. Poder360, citing the same preliminary report, puts the distance at around 3 kilometers. Both aircraft continued on their routes and landed safely, with no injuries, and the White House said the president was never in danger. The plane involved was operating Envoy Air flight 3742, bound for Pensacola, Florida. Since last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has banned simultaneous helicopter and airplane operations in the Washington airport area, which makes the episode especially sensitive for US authorities.
Brazil is part of the investigation for a technical reason: the E170 was designed by Embraer, the Brazilian planemaker. Under the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the country responsible for an aircraft's design must be notified and may take part in the investigation. Brazil's Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa), the national accident investigation body, was informed as the representative of the state of design.
Communication failure
The preliminary report released by the NTSB on Thursday points to communication problems between the presidential team and the control tower as the central factor in the incident. According to the document, Marine One took off from an alternate spot at the White House because of construction work, in an area with known problems on the radio frequency used to reach the tower. Safety protocol requires the presidential team to warn air traffic control three minutes before takeoff, so that landings and departures at the airport can be temporarily halted.
According to G1, the agents tried to make contact twice. On the first attempt, the warning did not reach the controller. On the second, the signal arrived broken up and "completely inaudible". Without the mandatory warning, the tower cleared the commercial jet for takeoff. Once airborne, the two aircraft managed to communicate, and the E170 crew reported having visual contact with the helicopter.
For Brazil, the stake in the case is mainly technical and commercial. The E170/E175 jet family, to which the aircraft involved belongs, is widely used by regional airlines in the United States. So far, the preliminary evidence points to a communication failure on the ground, not to any problem with the Brazilian-designed plane. The NTSB investigation is ongoing, and the final report is expected to detail the causes and recommend measures to prevent a repeat.