Heart-stopping second Delta airliner virtually collided with personal jet on LAX runway
An investigation is underway after a Delta plane almost collided with a private jet at Los Angeles Airport.
The heart-stopping moment was caught on a runway livestream, and controllers can be heard shouting: ‘Stop, stop, stop’ ahead of the near-miss around 4.30pm Friday.
According to the LA Times, the chartered Embraer E135 jet was carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team, and had just landed from Spokane, Washington.
The jet was about to cross the runway when controllers noticed the Delta plane hurtling down the path and frantically told the Embraer to halt.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators have launched a probe into the incident, which was captured by plane spotter Kevin Ray’s YouTube channel.
Along with the air controller, Ray can be heard shouting out in shock. ‘Wow! In the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never heard a ATC controller tell a plane to ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ he says in the video.
An FAA spokesperson told DailyMail.com the jet ‘never crossed the runway edge line’. ‘The FAA will investigate,’ they said.
Gonzaga University men’s basketball team was on board the jet at the time, and they faced UCLA the following day.
An investigation is underway after a Delta plane almost collided with a private jet at Los Angeles Airport. The heart-stopping moment was caught on a runway livestream
According to the LA Times , the chartered Embraer E135 jet was carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team, and had just landed from Spokane, Washington
The school ‘expects to receive more information related to this event, and is grateful that the incident ended safely for all,’ a spokesman told the LA Times in a statement.
Gonzaga University is a private Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington.
The Delta Flight 471 was heading to Atlanta, and did not seem to be impacted by the near-miss. Delta said it ‘operated as normal’.
The Key Lime Air flight departed Spokane International Airport at 2.10pm on Friday and landed at LAX nine minutes early, at 4.20pm, according to FlightAware data.
Meanwhile, the Delta flight departed 16 minutes late, at 4.31pm, the tracking website shows.
It comes amid the busy holiday season, with TSA experts saying they expect to screen around 40 million passengers at airport security checkpoints over the Christmas period.
The incident also follows two horrific plane crashes in South Korea and Azerbaijan.
A Jeju Air plane skidded off the runway at Muan airport, 180 miles south of Seoul, before slamming into a concrete barrier and bursting into flames on Sunday after its landing gear apparently failed to deploy.
Almost all of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 were killed, with only two members of cabin crew – a man and a woman – pulled from the wreckage alive.
Meanwhile, 38 people died when Flight J2-8432 was downed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day.
‘Based on the opinion of experts and on the words of eyewitnesses, it can be concluded that there was external interference,’ Azerbaijani’s transport minister, Rashad Nabiyev, told reporters on Friday.
‘It is necessary to find out from what kind of weapon,’ he added, citing reports from survivors of hearing ‘three explosions’ as the plane was over Grozny.