Several pilots of flights trying to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last weekend got faulty warnings about possible collisions with other aircraft.
On Saturday, multiple flights received false warnings, leading some pilots to abort their landings and circle back to avoid what they thought were other aircraft.
“Several flight crews inbound to Reagan Washington National Airport received onboard alerts Saturday indicating another aircraft was nearby when no other aircraft were in the area. Some of the crews executed go-arounds as a result of the alerts,” the Federal Aviation Administration told USA Today.
At least a dozen flights were affected between 6 and 10 a.m.
“We had to dive a little bit,” the pilot of American Eagle flight 4469 told air traffic controllers. When asked if they had seen anything outside of the plane’s traffic collision avoidance system, the pilot responded “negative, it would just say an unknown target descending rapidly,” according to CBS News.
As for what could have caused the onboard warnings other than another plane, one pilot has a couple of theories.
“The idea that it wasn’t another aircraft leaves it up to the other two, which is either a flock of birds, which is very unlikely, or something on the ground that was transmitting that was causing an erroneous signal that caught several of these airplanes in a row,” 40-year commercial airline pilot Steve Scheibner told WJLA-TV.
Former National Transportation Safety Board chief and CBS travel safety analyst Robert Sumwalt told the network that the situation was unprecedented.
“I’ve never heard of something like this. Nuisance alerts, yes, they happen. But not like this where several planes have it at the same location,” Mr. Sumwalt said.
The incidents came several days after an American Airlines flight landing at the airport did a routine go-around maneuver, and more than a month after the midair collision between another American Airlines plane trying to land and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter killed all 67 people aboard both aircraft.
