FAA: Two planes, including a flight from Boston, abort landings after close encounter with helicopter

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed two planes, including a flight from Boston, had to abort their landings on Thursday at Reagan International Airport.

The FAA says the two planes came within a half mile of a Blackhawk helicopter headed to the Pentagon.

7NEWS Aviation Expert Tom Kinton explained what likely happened.

“The FAA said the helicopter was cleared direct to the Pentagon but kind of circled when it got to the Pentagon. But I’m just speculating a little bit but the controller got a little bit concerned and said, I don’t know this guy’s doing so I’m not gonna wait for something to get close. I’m going to send my traffic around till I sort this thing out. A very good call in the interest of safety,” said Kinton.

Kinton said passengers likely didn’t know what was going on.

“Usually the pilots are very busy in a missed approach because they’ve got to get gear up, flaps up, look for the traffic that’s causing the go-around so they’re very busy. Little, if any time to communicate to the back of the plane what happened,” said Kinton.

The helicopter was not in new restricted airspace implemented after January’s deadly mid-air collision which left 67 people dead, including six people with ties to the skating club of Boston.

Kinton argues more needs to be done.

“This is all too common at this airport,” said Kinton. “This is a systemic problem. This isn’t a one off. It’s very alarming that we’re not even three months from the incident in January, we have two missed approaches because of helicopter traffic and that was after procedures were improved and they put steps in place that would prevent what happened that night. So obviously there’s work to do.”

Kinton says it starts with the helicopters.

“In my opinion, they shouldn’t be there, period,” said Kinton. “You get the helicopters out of there unless it’s a military emergency. Fine let them go where they need to go, send the aircraft around, get the aircraft out of there but the two don’t mix. This is systemic.”