Authorities say two planes nearly collided at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas on Saturday after an air traffic controller allowed incoming and outgoing flights to use the same runway.
A FedEx cargo plane, a Boeing 767, was forced to abort a landing after a Southwest Airlines flight was authorized to depart on the same runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The FedEx flight, traveling from Memphis, Tenn., was allowed to land on Runway 18-Left at about 6:40 a.m. local time while several miles from the airport, the FAA said.
“Just before the FedEx aircraft was about to land, the controller authorized Southwest flight 708 to depart from the same runway,” the agency said. “The pilot of the FedEx plane stopped landing and started climbing out.”
In one radio excerpts of the episode were posted on Twitter, Michael McCormick, a former FAA control tower operator and assistant professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle University, whose administrative office is in Daytona, Fla., said an air traffic controller alludes to this. visibility is reduced.
At one point, the Southwest flight was abruptly told to cancel, according to the audio clip.
Mr McCormick said air traffic controllers may not have seen either plane and are relying on both pilot reports and airport surface detection technology to track the planes. He said the near-collision was “aggravated” by limited visibility, possibly due to dense fog or an unusually narrower distance between the ground and clouds.
Mr McCormick said there was not enough room between the two planes and said they were at a “critical phase of flight in bad weather”.
McCormick and Ross Feinstein, former spokesman for both the Transportation Security Administration and American Airlines, said the near miss appeared to be caused by air traffic control. The union representing air traffic controllers could not be immediately reached on Sunday.
According to the flight-tracking website, the Southwest plane landed about three hours later in Cancun, Mexico. Flight knowledge. It is not clear how many people were on the plane. A company representative declined to comment. A spokesman for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport declined to comment.
Shannon Davis, a FedEx spokesman, said the cargo plane from Memphis finally landed safely in Austin. It is unclear what cargo it was carrying, if any.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA both said they were investigating.
The Austin incident comes a day after a minor crash involving two United Airlines planes at Newark Liberty International Airport. The FAA said a Boeing 787 being towed hit the wing of a parked plane, a Boeing 757-200. Pictures from the scene showed the front end of an aircraft had been ripped off.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said no one was injured and airport operations were not affected. A United Airlines representative said the passengers had been rebooked on other flights and the other plane was empty of any passengers. The FAA said it was investigating.
Last month, at Kennedy International Airport, an American Airlines plane crossed the runway about 1,000 feet in front of a Delta flight about to take off. The US pilots appeared to have misunderstood instructions given to them by air traffic control, according to radar records and audio recordings.
