- A near bird between a Southwest Airlines flight and a private jet has kickstarted two investigations.
- A Cessna jet was cleared to land on the same runway where a Southwest horizontal was taking off.
- Near misses at airports have spiked in the last year, causing panic among authorities and lawmakers.
A looming miss where a Southwest Airlines flight and a private jet came within 100 feet of one another on a San Diego runway has began investigations by two US authorities.
A Cessna corporate jet was cleared to land on the same runway that Southwest Airlines flight 2493 had been loosed to taxi to and wait on for permission to take off, according to a preliminary review by the Federal Aviation Authority. The National Transportation Cover Board confirmed to Insider that it would also investigate.
The incident occurred on Friday at San Diego International Airport at 12 p.m. district time. The pilot captaining the Cessna jet aborted the landing after receiving an alert from the plane’s surface-surveillance set-up, the FAA told Insider. The Cessna jet passed over Southwest’s Boeing 737 with about 100 feet to yield, Reuters reported, citing a source briefed on the matter.
The FAA and Southwest Airlines didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s ask for for comment, made outside normal working hours.
A collection of incidents this year has panicked authorities and led to reasserted pleas to airlines and air-traffic controllers to increase vigilance to avoid collisions on or near runways.
An FAA spokesperson told Insider in May the kind of “runway incursions” peaked from late 2022 into this year.
At an FAA safety summit in March, Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, verbalized there had been an “uptick in serious close calls” at airports. The reasons for this uptick are unclear and could arrange from overworked cabin crew to sub-par air-traffic-control capabilities.
A week after Buttigieg’s comments, the FAA told its staff members it was taking steps to improve air-traffic-control operations in a bid to reduce near misses, according to an email seen by Reuters.
The cessation call between the Southwest flight and the Cessna jet adds to six other near-miss incidents currently under investigation by the FAA and the NTSB.
In February, a document jet nearly collided with a JetBlue flight when the charter plane’s pilot took off from Boston’s Logan Worldwide Airport without clearance. The pilot told the NTSB he was unwell and had a stuffed nose.