A United flight came within a few 100ft of a US military helicopter near John Wayne airport in southern California, triggering an alarm directing the airline pilots to change course.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday that it was investigating the incident that happened at about 8.40pm Tuesday when a military Black Hawk helicopter returning from a training mission crossed into the plane’s path. The pilots of the passenger plane carrying 162 passengers and six crew members stopped their descent and leveled off to avoid a collision.
That close call came just over a year after an American Airlines jet collided with an army Black Hawk helicopter near Washington DC, killing 67 people in the deadliest crash on US soil in more than two decades. The crash increased scrutiny of flight paths and regulations in place to avoid near misses between aircraft.
Earlier in March, the FAA changed policy as a result of that 2025 crash, requiring air traffic controllers to actively use radar to direct helicopters and planes around airports nationwide, rather than relying on pilots to see and avoid each other. Before the Washington crash, the air traffic controller asked the helicopter pilots whether they had seen the plane and approved letting them avoid it.
In a short statement about the close call in Santa Ana, California, on Tuesday night, the FAA said it would investigate whether the new rule was applied.
United issued a brief statement confirming the details of the Tuesday incident.
“During final approach to John Wayne airport in Orange county, pilots on United flight 589 were advised by air traffic control to watch for a military helicopter flying near the airport. They saw the helicopter, and also received a traffic alert, which they responded to by leveling the aircraft,” the statement read.
The United plane came within 525ft of the helicopter vertically and 1,422ft laterally at their closest point before leveling off after the airline pilots received a collision avoidance alarm, according to data from FlightRadar24.
Archive recordings of the traffic control tower at John Wayne airport, accessed via LiveATC.net, show a traffic controller asking moments after the close call whether the plane’s pilot had received any reference to the helicopter or been told to restrict his altitude. The pilot responded that he received a “resolution advisory”, the most serious collision avoidance alarm issued as an in-cockpit alert from the plane’s anti-collision software.
“We’re going to be addressing that, because that was not good,” the air traffic controller responded.
A California national guard spokesperson sent a short statement confirming that the helicopter, based at Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos, had been conducting routine training and was returning to base, “at an assigned altitude while in communication with air traffic control”.
It was unclear whether any temporary restrictions on flight paths or training routes were in place after the Tuesday close call.
An airport spokesperson said since the incident occurred in the air and not at the airport, she could not provide any information.
The latest close call happened two days after an Air Canada jet collided with a fire truck on a runway at LaGuardia airport in New York, killing both pilots.
