Trump's White House construction 'led to issues that resulted in Marine One's near-miss with passenger jet'

Trump's White House construction 'led to issues that resulted in Marine One's near-miss with passenger jet' Donald Trump's construction of the new ballroom at the White House caused radio issues that led air traffic controllers to not hear messages sent from pilots preparing to carry the US President Ongoing construction at the White House contributed to radio problems that reportedly caused radio problems which resulted in Marine One's near miss with a passenger jet, a report has found. Federal investigators said on Thursday the construction work resulted in air traffic controllers being unable to hear warning calls that Donald Trump's helicopter was preparing to take off. This resulted in them clearing an airline jet to take off as Marine One lifted off earlier this month, the investigators said on Thursday. In the week leading up to the near-miss, air traffic controllers met with Marine One pilots to discuss having not received the standard three-minute warning call ahead of its flights, a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report said. They planned to relay radio calls through someone else if there were future problems but that was also unsuccessful on the day of the August 4 incident. Communication issues would come up again on Thursday, when the air traffic controllers at Ronald Raegan Washington National Airport were not able to hear Marine One and had to ask a support helicopter for help just before take-off. “I can’t hear Marine One,” an air traffic controller says to the support helicopter. “If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?” Following the incident earlier this month, technicians discovered the reason Marine One was having trouble talking to the tower at times was because the helicopter shifted to a new location during the construction. So, the Federal Aviation Administration moved the radio receiver out of a neighbourhood near the airport and to the top of the tower at Raegan to fix the problem. “Even though they were aware of some previous communications issues, they never got at the root cause,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told the Associated Press. A recording posted by ATC.com showed the Marine One pilot telling the tower it was "three minutes to lift" just like the 2013 agreement between the FAA and the military calls for. But the controller seemed surprised a few minutes later when it took off. “Uh, Marine One, you said, uh, you’re proceeding as briefed?” the controller asked before giving directions and continuing: "OK, no three minutes, roger, proceed as briefed.” Guzzetti told the agency he did not believe the controllers were at fault as they never heard Marine One's warnings. He added: "In this case, the controller did absolutely nothing wrong. "He did not receive the transmission saying that they were three minutes away from taking off. So he had no reason to hold the airplane that was lining up and waiting."