A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn’t worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S. Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January’s deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn’t even know the hotline hadn’t been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Defense department officials didn’t immediately respond to questions Wednesday about the near miss earlier this month and the steps it is taking to ensure helicopter flights in the area are safe. The FAA didn’t immediately answer follow-up questions after the hearing about how that hotline was supposed to be used.

“The developments at DCA (Reagan airport) in its airspace are extremely concerning,” Cruz said. “This committee remains laser-focused on monitoring a safe return to operations at DCA and making sure all users in the airspace are operating responsibly.”

The Army suspended all helicopter flights around Reagan airport after the latest near miss, but McIntosh said the FAA was close to ordering the Army to stop flying because of the safety concerns before it did so voluntarily.

“We did have discussions if that was an option that we wanted to pursue,” McIntosh told the Senate Commerce Committee at the hearing.

January’s crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people – making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. The National Transportation Safety Board has said there were an alarming 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the crash that should have prompted action.

Since the crash, the FAA has tried to ensure that military helicopters never share the same airspace as planes, but controllers had to order two planes to abort their landings on May 1 because of an Army helicopter circling near the Pentagon.

“After the deadly crash near Reagan National Airport, FAA closed the helicopter route involved, but a lack of coordination between FAA and the Department of Defense has continued to put the flying public at risk,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.

McIntosh said the helicopter should never have entered the airspace around Reagan airport without permission from an air traffic controller.

“That did not occur,” he said. “My question – and I think the larger question is – is why did that not occur? Without compliance to our procedures and our policies, this is where safety drift starts to happen.”

The NTSB is investigating what happened.

In addition to that incident, a commercial flight taking off from Reagan airport had to take evasive action after coming within a few hundred feet of four military jets heading to a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. McIntosh blamed that incident on a miscommunication between FAA air traffic controllers at a regional facility and the tower at Reagan, which he said had been addressed.

WASHINGTON – Showers and thunderstorms are raising flooding concerns across the Washington, D.C. region on Wednesday, with isolated flash floods possible through the afternoon and evening.

Storms increase flood risks

What we know:

FOX 5’s Taylor Grenda says that while rainfall won’t be as widespread as Tuesday, saturated ground conditions could heighten flood risks along portions of central Maryland, northern Virginia, the District and parts of West Virginia. Many areas have already received more than 1.5 inches of rain in the past 24 hours.

Scattered storms are expected to continue throughout the day, with pop-up thunderstorms keeping conditions unsettled. Highs will reach the upper 70s, with drizzle clearing by mid-morning. Extreme humidity and increasing instability could increase storm development into the evening.

Unsettled weather continues

Early Wednesday morning, high standing water was reported along a section of I-495 between I-95 and US 1, with multiple reports of downed trees adding to travel hazards.

The National Weather Service advises motorists to use caution while driving and to turn around when encountering flooded roads. They also advise being especially cautious at night when flooding hazards are more difficult to detect.

The unsettled weather pattern is expected to persist through the week, with a hot and humid start to the weekend and more storm chances ahead.

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has revealed that he went swimming with his children in a Washington DC creek that authorities have said is toxic due to contamination by an upstream, ageing sewer system.

The “Make America healthy again” crusader attracted attention for the Mother’s Day dip in Dumbarton Oaks Park with his grandchildren Bobcat and Cassius, which he posted about on X. He was also accompanied by relatives Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick and Jackson.

Rock Creek, which runs through the federal park, is described as unsafe for swimming or wading because it acts as a runoff for excess sewage and storm water during rain storms.

Studies of streams in the nation’s capital have revealed “chronic elevated levels of Escherichia coli (E coli) contamination that exceeded DC’s surface water quality standards”, according to one published in 2021.

The District of Columbia banned swimming in all waterways in 1971, citing “extraordinarily high levels of pollutants from human and animal waste containing bacteria such as salmonella and hepatitis, and viruses”.

Separately, the National Park Service has said: “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health. All District waterways are subject to a swim ban – this means wading, too!”

Part of the issue is that the District’s combined sewer system was developed before 1900, and – like New York City sewage and rain systems – is designed to combine to ease runoff, bypassing water treatment plants.

In Washington, according to Open Data DC: “Release of this excess flow is necessary to prevent flooding in homes, basements, businesses, and streets. [Combined sewer overflows] are discharged to the Anacostia River, Rock Creek, Potomac River or tributary waters at CSO outfalls during most moderate rain events.”

Kennedy, an avid outdoorsman, had not responded to a request for comment as of publication time, and has not posted on social media about it.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Kennedy described himself as a “renegade”. Joined by other appointees to the federal health agency – including the TV doctor Mehmet Oz, Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya – he said: “The entire leadership of this agency are renegades who are, you know, who are juggernauts against convention and who are trying to look for truth, no matter what the cost.”

On Sunday, Kennedy joined Donald Trump to unveil a new administration plan to lower high US prescription drug prices. He thanked the US president for standing “up to the oligarchs” and took aim at Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who has made drug pricing a signature issue of his political platform.

“It’s one of these promises that politicians make to their constituents knowing that they’ll never have to do it,” the former 2024 Democratic turned independent presidential candidate said.

Sanders later scoffed at the administration’s plan, saying it “will be thrown out by the courts”.

Kennedy is known for taking risks of a biological kind. He admitted to transporting a roadkill bear cub to New York’s Central Park, and his daughter Kick described a childhood adventure when her father transported a rotting whale head on top of their car from Nantucket to their Westchester home.

Had Kennedy’s foray into the polluted creek produced ill effects, the probable treatment for E coli poisoning would not necessarily have benefited much from the administration’s drug cost reduction plan. Common antibiotics used to treat E coli infections are typically priced $10 to $30 for a course of treatment.