Another Near-Collision Between Two Aircraft Occurs

News of another near-disaster on an airport runway emerged yesterday, following other reports of similar close calls having occurred at other U.S. airfields in recent weeks.

The near-collision/narrow miss occurred Saturday morning at Texas’ Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, after an air traffic controller cleared a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet for departure on the same runway where a FedEx Boeing 767 cargo plane had already received permission to land when it was “several miles from the airport”, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The incident is being investigated by federal officials at the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the latter of which referred to it as a “surface event” in a tweet, specifically a “possible runway incursion and overflight”.

“Shortly before the FedEx aircraft was due to land, the controller cleared Southwest Flight 708 to depart from the same runway,” the FAA said in a statement. “The pilot of the FedEx airplane discontinued the landing and initiated a climb out.”

Another tweet by flight-tracker website Flightradar24, complete with animation, illustrates just how closely the two aircraft’s courses converged over the runway. The outlet reported, “At the closest point horizontally, the aircraft were less than 1000 feet apart, but we do not have same-time data points in order to calculate an exact figure,” the site reported.

The passenger plane was still on the runway when the FedEx crew reached the airstrip, “suggesting a lag-time in the Southwest crew initiating its take-off—prompting FedEx pilots to stop their landing,” NPR reported.

The FedEx cargo plane proceeded to circle around over the airfield and landed safely 12 minutes later, while the Southwest flight departed 15 minutes behind schedule, but still managed to arrive early in its destination of Cancun, Mexico.

Flightradar24 also noted that frozen fog had settled over the airport at the time, and, “Visibility at the time of the incident was marginal and decreasing,” although it’s unclear whether this actually factored into the evident confusion.

According to USA Today, both Southwest Airlines and FedEx were referring all questions about the mishaps to federal officials.

Yesterday’s close call comes closely behind a near-collision in mid-January between American Airlines and Delta Air Lines jets at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport, as well as another minor crash between two JetBlue aircraft at JFK that occurred while one was pushing back from its gate.