The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has opened an investigation into a breach of security protocol that involved Marine One, the presidential helicopter carrying U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday. The agency said the incident did not appear to pose an imminent collision risk: the two aircraft were apparently not on the same trajectory. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The event took place yesterday afternoon when Marine One departed the White House bound for Joint Base Andrews. According to some sources, air traffic controllers did not suspend commercial flights in the area around the nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, as required by security procedures.

The presidential helicopter left the Ellipse at about 2:33 p.m. local time (18:33 GMT). One minute later Envoy Air flight 3742, a regional Embraer 170 to Pensacola, Florida, took off. Initial reconstructions indicate the required minimum separation—1.5 miles horizontally and 500 feet vertically near airports—may not have been maintained between the two aircraft.

However, an FAA spokesperson told the U.S. newspaper that Marine One and the departing airliner did not appear to have come dangerously close according to federal standards, and their flight paths were not convergent, which suggests the incident does not qualify as a serious collision risk. “Marine One flights are conducted by some of the best pilots in the world and at no time was the president in danger,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

NEW: STATter911 video showing a jet departing Runway 1 at DCA as the helicopter with President Trump was over East Potomac Park heading toward Joint Base Andrews. As @WSJ reports, the normal procedure of stopping commercial flights at Reagan National did not occur this afternoon… https://t.co/l3qGgDvXfa pic.twitter.com/lj4K19818w

— Dave Statter (@STATter911) August 5, 2026

Both aircraft landed without incident. Another regional flight, Republic 4700, was about three miles from Reagan and was diverted as a precaution before landing normally.

After the midair collision on January 29, 2025 near Reagan National Airport, the FAA significantly restricted the simultaneous presence of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters in the area. That day, a collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle plane killed 67 people. Even before last year’s midair collision, there had been other safety concerns. One such event was a 2021 near-miss involving a Marine helicopter used by then–Vice President Kamala Harris, who was not aboard; in that incident the helicopter came onto a potential collision course with two Air Force jets conducting a ceremonial flyover of Arlington National Cemetery, according to the Wall Street Journal.