Marine One's crew tried three times to warn Reagan National Airport that President Trump's helicopter was about to take off on Aug. 4, and every attempt failed, setting up a close call with a commercial jet that federal investigators are now picking apart.
The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report detailing how garbled and dead radio transmissions left air traffic controllers at Reagan National unaware that Marine One was lifting off from the Ellipse, roughly two miles north of the airport. Moments later, the helicopter and Envoy Air Flight 3742, an Embraer E-170 bound for Pensacola, Florida, passed within approximately 0.82 nautical miles of each other laterally and about 700 feet vertically.
No one was hurt. Neither aircraft was damaged. Both flights continued. But the sequence of failures laid out in the NTSB's findings, first reported by Fox News Digital, raises pointed questions about how a known communications problem went unfixed until after a presidential helicopter and a loaded passenger jet came uncomfortably close over the nation's capital.
Marine One's crew followed procedure. Before departing the Ellipse for Trump's planned trip to Los Angeles, the pilots attempted to transmit the required three-minute advance notification on Reagan National's helicopter-control frequency. The first call was not received at all. A second transmission came through "broken and completely unreadable," the NTSB report states.
The crew then tried a workaround: relaying the notification through the helicopter facility at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a nearby military installation. That effort also failed.
With no confirmation that the tower knew they were coming, Marine One lifted off anyway. Meanwhile, controllers cleared Envoy Air Flight 3742 to depart from Runway 1. The Envoy flight crew reported that the jet's onboard traffic-collision avoidance system announced "Traffic, Traffic" as the aircraft climbed and accelerated after takeoff. The system did not escalate to a resolution advisory, the automated command that directs pilots to change altitude to avoid a collision.
Marine One eventually climbed high enough to establish reliable radio contact with the tower. Controllers then issued a traffic advisory, and the helicopter crew immediately reported having the Envoy jet in sight. Both aircraft moved apart, and the flights continued without further incident.
The Aug. 4 failure did not come out of nowhere. On July 30, Marine Helicopter Squadron One, the unit designated HMX-1 that operates Marine One, met with Reagan National tower staff to discuss operations in the area. During that meeting, HMX-1 told controllers that communications from the Ellipse had been "spotty."
Controllers raised their own concern: HMX-1 crews had not always provided the required three-minute warning before takeoff. The two sides agreed on a backup plan. If direct radio contact failed, helicopter crews would relay the notification through another aircraft.
Five days later, every link in that chain broke. The direct frequency failed. The relay through Anacostia-Bolling failed. And the passenger jet was already rolling down the runway. The Washington Examiner noted that both the primary and alternative contact systems failed on the day of the incident despite the July 30 agreement, a contingency plan that proved worthless when it mattered.
The root of the radio trouble traces back to a construction project at the White House. Marine One was temporarily operating from the Ellipse, a 52-acre park just south of the White House grounds, because its usual landing zone was unavailable. FAA technicians later determined that the radio transmitter-receiver site used for Reagan National's helicopter-control frequency did not have adequate line-of-sight coverage to the Ellipse.
In plain terms: the radios that were supposed to connect Marine One to the airport tower could not reach the spot where Marine One was actually taking off. Just The News reported that the construction-related relocation was the root cause of the communication failures, and that the same issues had persisted even beyond the Aug. 4 incident.
After the near-miss, the FAA moved the radios from a nearby residential neighborhood to the top of Reagan National's control tower. The agency then conducted radio checks with two HMX-1 aircraft operating near the Ellipse and reported no deficiencies. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FAA officials are working with the Marine One team to resolve the telecom issues.
The airspace around Reagan National is classified as Class B, the most tightly controlled tier in the FAA's system. Within it, aircraft must maintain either 1.5 nautical miles of lateral separation or 500 feet of vertical separation. The preliminary estimate of 700 feet vertical separation met the vertical standard, even though the lateral distance of 0.82 nautical miles fell short of the 1.5-mile horizontal threshold.
That technical compliance does not erase the broader problem. Controllers did not know Marine One was departing. The three-minute notification exists precisely so controllers can sequence traffic and prevent conflicts. Without it, the system worked backward, the collision-avoidance alert on the Envoy jet flagged the conflict after both aircraft were already airborne and converging.
The NTSB said it is continuing to review surveillance data to calculate and confirm the closest point between the two aircraft. The agency cautioned that its preliminary report "is intended to present the factual information developed to date" and does not contain "analysis, conclusions, or findings related to probable cause." Any safety recommendations, the NTSB added, would be "publicly announced and further findings would be released through its public docket and final report process."
White House spokesman Kush Desai pushed back on any suggestion that the president faced risk. He told Fox News Digital:
"Marine One flights are piloted by some of the best aviators in the world, and at no point was the president in harm's way."
The FAA, in an earlier statement, described the event as a "momentary loss of separation, after which the aircraft continued to move away from one another." The agency also said the air traffic controller was in contact with both the commercial pilot and the Marine One pilot during the loss of separation. Breitbart reported that the FAA maintained the incident "didn't appear to be a dangerous close call."
Those reassurances may satisfy the immediate safety question. They do not answer the systemic one. A known radio dead zone went unfixed for at least five days. A contingency plan agreed upon by both the military helicopter unit and the airport tower collapsed on its first real test. And the FAA's corrective action, moving the radios to the top of the control tower, happened only after the incident forced the issue.
The near-miss carries added weight because of Reagan National's recent history. The airport sits in some of the most congested and security-sensitive airspace in the country, and aviation safety around it drew intense national attention after a fatal mid-air collision in January 2025. Any incident involving loss of separation at Reagan National, let alone one involving the president's aircraft, lands under a brighter spotlight than it might elsewhere.
The NTSB investigation remains open. The agency said it would not comment beyond the preliminary report until further findings are released through its public docket and final report. Whether the board issues formal safety recommendations will depend on what its full review uncovers.
When the people responsible for keeping the president's helicopter connected to the airport tower already know the radios don't work, fix it before takeoff, not after the near-miss makes the evening news.
