A Delta passenger plane had a close call with a US Air Force jet near Reagan National Airport in what could have been the second disaster to take place at same location in the past two months. 

The flight, with 137 people on board, had just departed for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, when it suddenly received an emergency notification of a nearby aircraft. 

Alarms went off inside the cockpit of the passenger flight just minutes after taking off, due to how close the T-38 jet came to the plane.

The close call happened just south of the airport and close to the spot where an American Airlines jet collided with a army helicopter in January, killing 67 people.  

According to tracking data from FlightRadar 24, the Air Force jet flew past the Delta plane in excess of 350 miles per hour. 

The FAA said the military jet was in the area alongside three others for a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery.

In air traffic control chatter heard via LiveATC.net, a Delta pilot can be heard saying: ‘Was there an actual aircraft about 500 feet below us?’. 

An air traffic controller responds: ‘Affirmative’.

In a statement released on Friday, the FAA said they would be investigating the near miss. 

‘The Delta aircraft received an onboard alert that another aircraft was nearby. Air traffic controllers issued corrective instructions to both aircraft’, they said. 

Delta said in a statement: ‘Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people.

‘We will cooperate with regulators and aviation stakeholders in any review of this flight.’

US Senator for Minnesota Amy Klobuchar posted on X saying: ‘Unbelievably dangerous and thank God people are safe. 

‘My first call to Department of Defense tomorrow: why are your planes flying 500 feet below passenger jets full of Minnesotans headed from DCA to my state.’ 

It comes after a hearing this week in which Senators demanded answers over why close calls between military aircraft and passenger flights went unchecked at the airport. 

That was on the back of a report by the National Transportation Safety Board in which federal investigators found a staggering amount of close proximity events. 

It was uncovered that 15,214 ‘near-miss events’ of planes getting alerts about helicopters being in close proximity between October 2021 and December 2024.

The NTSB also said that there were 85 cases where two aircraft where laterally split by less than 1,500 feet, and a vertical separation of less than 200 feet.

The latest incident follows a streak of aircraft crashes and close calls since the start of the year including the one at Reagan National Airport.

At the time of the collision, a single air traffic controller was simultaneously monitoring both the helicopter and plane traffic. 

Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm, according to an early FAA report seen by The New York Times.

After 9:30pm the duties are typically combined and left to one person as the airport sees less traffic later in the night.

A supervisor reportedly decided to combine those duties before the scheduled cutoff time however, and allowed one air traffic controller to leave work early.

The FAA report said that staffing configuration ‘was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic’.

Reagan National has been understaffed for many years, with just 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023 – well below the target of 30 – according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan submitted to Congress.

The situation appeared to have improved since then, as a source told CNN the Reagan National control tower was 85 percent staffed with 24 of 28 positions filled.

DailyMail.com revealed on Friday that two air traffic controllers had even traded punches when a fight erupted inside the control tower at Reagan National.

A source said that trouble flared up on Thursday when a pair of on-duty controllers got into an argument. 

By the time the brawling colleagues were separated, there was blood spattered over a control console, according to our insider.

‘I’ve heard of controllers going at it in the parking lot but this was on a whole new level,’ the source told DailyMail.com.

‘That facility is out of control. People are cracking because of what happened in January.’

Just days after the horrific collision, a twin-engine jet plummeted to the ground and exploded in a large fireball in Pennsylvania, killing all six people onboard.

Less than a month later, on February 17, a Delta passenger plane crashed-landed upside down in chaotic scenes at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Canada. 

Miraculously, everyone on board survived after being suspended upside-down by their seatbelts for several minutes until they tentatively began evacuating.