Close call at Reagan National Airport as Delta flight narrowly avoids collision with Air Force jet

A Delta passenger jet had a close call with a US Air Force jet near Reagan National Airport, just minutes after taking off. 

The Delta flight, carrying 137 passengers, had recently taken off for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota when it was alerted about a nearby aircraft.

Alarms went off inside the cockpit of the passenger flight due to how close the T-38 jet was. 

Tracking data from FlightRadar 24 indicates that the jet flew past the Delta plane and the airport in excess of 350 miles per hour. 

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the military jet was in the area alongside 3 others for a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery.

In air traffic control chatter heard via LiveATC.net, a Delta pilot can be heard saying: ‘Was there an actual aircraft about 500 feet below us?’. 

An air traffic controller responds: ‘Affirmative’.

This incident occurred south of the airport, near the location where an American Airlines plane had crashed into a military helicopter in January, resulting in the loss of 67 lives.

In a statement released on Friday, the FAA said they would be investigating the near miss. 

According to reports, the Delta plane’s onboard system detected the proximity of another aircraft, prompting air traffic controllers to provide guidance to both planes to avoid any potential collision.

Delta said in a statement: ‘Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people.

‘We will cooperate with regulators and aviation stakeholders in any review of this flight.’

It comes after a hearing this week in which Senators demanded answers over why close calls between military aircraft and passenger flights went unchecked at the airport. 

That was on the back of a report by the National Transportation Safety Board in which federal investigators found a staggering amount of close proximity events. 

It was uncovered that 15,214 ‘near-miss events’ of planes getting alerts about helicopters being in close proximity between October 2021 and December 2024.

The NTSB also said that there were 85 cases where two aircraft where laterally split by less than 1,500 feet, and a vertical separation of less than 200 feet.

The latest incident follows a streak of aircraft crashes and close calls since the start of the year including the one at Reagan National Airport.

At the time of the collision, a single air traffic controller was simultaneously monitoring both the helicopter and plane traffic. 

Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm, according to an early FAA report seen by The New York Times.

After 9:30pm the duties are typically combined and left to one person as the airport sees less traffic later in the night.

A supervisor reportedly decided to combine those duties before the scheduled cutoff time however, and allowed one air traffic controller to leave work early.

The FAA report said that staffing configuration ‘was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic’.

Reagan National has been understaffed for many years, with just 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023 – well below the target of 30 – according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan submitted to Congress.

The situation appeared to have improved since then, as a source told CNN the Reagan National control tower was 85 percent staffed with 24 of 28 positions filled.

DailyMail.com revealed on Friday that two air traffic controllers had even traded punches when a fight erupted inside the control tower at Reagan National.

A source said that trouble flared up on Thursday when a pair of on-duty controllers got into an argument. 

By the time the brawling colleagues were separated, there was blood spattered over a control console, according to our insider.

‘I’ve heard of controllers going at it in the parking lot but this was on a whole new level,’ the source told DailyMail.com.

‘That facility is out of control. People are cracking because of what happened in January.’

Just days after the horrific collision, a twin-engine jet plummeted to the ground and exploded in a large fireball in Pennsylvania, killing all six people onboard.

Less than a month later, on February 17, a Delta passenger plane crashed-landed upside down in chaotic scenes at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Canada. 

Miraculously, everyone on board survived after being suspended upside-down by their seatbelts for several minutes until they tentatively began evacuating.