By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Testing of counter-drone technology near Reagan Washington National Airport by the U.S. Secret Service and Navy earlier this month led to numerous flight crews receiving faulty alerts of potentially nearby aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration and a U.S. senator said on Thursday.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz said at a hearing that the March 1 faulty alerts that caused some flights to abort landings were due to the government testing using the same spectrum band as the alerting system. That led to interference that impacted at least a dozen flights.
Cruz’s statement was the first indication of what may have caused the significant number of faulty alerts.
Cruz, a Republican from Texas, called the testing inappropriate and “deeply disturbing” after a fatal collision on January 29 between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people. Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said that Cruz’s account was correct.
“The FAA had previously warned the Navy and the Secret Service against using that specific spectrum band due to interference risks,” Cruz said, adding the committee planned to investigate what happened.
A Secret Service spokesperson denied the agency had conducted any drone system testing on March 1 in the Washington area and added it “has been coordinating with the FAA to ensure our systems do not interfere with FAA frequencies or commercial air traffic operations.”
The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Secret Service statement.
The Navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FAA said earlier that some of the crews aborted landings and executed go-arounds as a result of the alerts that aim to prevent collisions and it was investigating why the warnings occurred.
There has been intense focus on traffic at the airport, which has the single busiest runway in the United States, since the January 29 collision.
Airplanes and pilots use Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance Systems to warn of potential collisions, which function independently of ground-based air traffic control.
Over the last two years, a series of troubling near-miss incidents has raised concerns about U.S. aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air traffic control operations.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Franklin Paul, Bill Berkrot and Jamie Freed)
