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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is conducting an investigation following reports from multiple airliners approaching Washington Reagan National Airport on Saturday morning. These flights received what seems to be false alerts from their onboard Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS).
According to audio communications accessed by CBS News, one air traffic controller communicated to an incoming flight that there had been multiple TCAS alerts reported: “It’s been happening all morning. Let me know if you see anything. No one else has seen anything except for on the TCAS.” At least five different flight crews indicated they had experienced purported false TCAS warnings.
American Eagle flight 4469, operated by Republic Airways and en route from Pittsburgh, was descending when the crew received an alert indicating a potential collision, prompting them to take evasive action. “We had to dive a little bit,” one pilot reported to air traffic controllers following the safe landing.
In response to inquiries from controllers asking if they had visually confirmed any nearby aircraft besides the TCAS warning, the pilots replied, “Negative, it would just say an unknown target descending rapidly.” Controllers noted this pattern of alerts had seemingly stopped but appeared to have resumed.
Robert Sumwalt, a former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board and a transportation safety analyst for CBS News, expressed concern over the unusual nature of these alerts. “I’ve never heard of something like this,” he remarked. “Nuisance alerts can occur, but seeing multiple planes experience this at the same location is highly atypical.”
The FAA confirmed that several flight crews reported receiving TCAS alerts while approaching Reagan National Airport, although the total number of affected aircraft remains unclear. TCAS is a crucial technology on individual aircraft, which employs their transponders to detect and communicate with neighboring planes. The system assesses position and altitude data to identify any potential collision hazards, notifying pilots with audio alerts and visual cues about how to respond, such as climbing or descending to prevent mid-air collisions.
The FAA indicated that some flight crews opted to conduct go-arounds due to the alerts, and emphasized that they are probing the circumstances surrounding these occurrences. As of Monday, federal investigators noted that no further issues had been reported since Saturday morning, with the last alerts logged around 9 a.m. EST.
American Eagle flight 4538, another Republic-operated flight arriving from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, also experienced a TCAS alert indicating an aircraft was 600 feet above them, despite the crew seeing nothing. Similarly, American Eagle flight 5197 from Minneapolis and flight 5098 from Des Moines reported false TCAS alerts without visual confirmation of nearby traffic.
An amusing exchange occurred among the crew of Flight 4469, jokingly attributing the unusual alerts to “aliens” and “Russia.” These events come in the wake of heightened safety concerns at Reagan National Airport, particularly following a tragic incident in January involving a Black Hawk and a regional aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has since recovered the TCAS data from that crash and is actively investigating the system and its components.
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