On June 9, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher was inbound to the Washington, D.C. area aboard a state-owned King Air to attend the funeral ceremony for President Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the transponder on the airplane was not working. When the aircraft reached the D.C. flight restricted zone, an area that extends some 16 miles around the Capitol, it was misidentified as a potential terrorist threat, leading to the evacuation of the U.S. Capitol. Interceptor aircraft were alerted and airborne and came within a minute or two of shooting down the “intruder.”
Apparently a technical gap between the FAA’s Potomac Tracon and the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) air defense command center inflamed the problem. The FAA has since stated that all aircraft approaching Washington must have a functioning transponder; that a new radar feed to the command center would effectively reduce the possibility of a similar misunderstanding in the future; and that controllers were to be retrained.
