The FAA is looking into why several commercial flights that were about to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport, which is close to Washington, DC, got midair crash alerts over the weekend even though there were no other planes nearby.
The warnings happened just a few miles from where American Eagle 5342 and a US Army Blackhawk helicopter crashed on January 29 and killed all on board.
As of Monday, the FAA said that several flight crews reported getting strange alerts on their Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) on Saturday, “indicating another aircraft was nearby when no other aircraft were in the area.”
Audio recorded by LiveATC.net shows that a Republic Airline pilot told the control station just after 9 a.m. Saturday, “We were about 1200 feet, and someone was diving straight on us.”
“This has been going on all morning. Tell me what you see. Someone from the tower told another Republic flight coming in to land, “No one else has seen anything except on the TCAS.”
A short time later, the pilot replied, “Yeah, we got a little something there.” “The TCAS showed that it was 600 feet above us.” We did not see anything.
TCAS searches for nearby airspace using radio bands from transponders in other planes, without help from ground-based air traffic control. If the system sees that a crash is likely, it tells the pilots what to do to get away safely.
The system can have issues at low altitudes and during landing approaches, and since it uses radio signals, there can be interference. However, it’s not usual for so many planes to get false warnings in such a short amount of time.
“Writing about traffic around 11 o’clock.” A PSA Airlines pilot asked the control station on Saturday, “We got anything out here?” “Not good…” There is no known traffic going between you and the field.
The FAA says that “because of the alerts,” some pilots chose to cancel their landings. This is called a “go-round.”
