Alaska Airlines jet and cargo airplane in heart-stopping near-miss as audio reveals last-minute name that averted catastrophe
An Alaska Airlines jet nearly plowed into a FedEx cargo plane as they both landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday.
Flight radar shows the Alaska Airlines flight, which had originated in Portland, Oregon, was about to land on a runway at the busy New York City-area airport at around 8.17pm as the FedEx 777 cargo plane from Memphis, Tennessee was making its final descent onto an adjacent runway.
But at the last minute, an air traffic controller told the pilot of the Alaska Airlines plane to go around and maintain 2,000 feet in the air.
It was just 150 feet in the air at the time, and preliminary data from Flightradar24 shows the Alaska flight cleared the cargo plane by just 300 to 325 feet.
When the FedEx flight then safely touched down, the pilot could be heard in air traffic control radio telling the controller, ‘Nice job.’
The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are now investigating what may have caused the two flights to get so close.
But Michael McCormick, the former vice president of the FAA, noted: ‘It is a challenge for a tower controller to try to get that timing perfect.
‘It doesn’t always happen and that’s what happened in this case,’ he told ABC 7. ‘So the tower controller waited and unfortunately, in my opinion, too long, and they had to send the aircraft on a go-around.’
An Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon nearly plowed into a FedEx cargo plane as they were both landing at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday evening
At the last minute, an air traffic controller told the pilot of the Alaska Airlines flight to go-around, causing it to narrowly avoid colliding with the FedEx flight
In a statement, a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines said the flight was cleared to land at Newark when air traffic control issued a go around, ‘which our pilots are highly trained for.’
There were 171 passengers and six crew members on board the flight at the time, and no injuries were reported according to the airline.
A spokesperson for FedEx also said in a prepared statement that its flight crew followed instructions from air traffic control and landed safely.
The incident comes as air traffic controllers are working without pay, amid a partial government shutdown.
Democrats and Republicans have not yet been able to reach a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security following two fatal shootings of US citizens during immigration raids in Minnesota.
Airlines for America – an industry trade group – is now calling on Congress to end the shutdown as it estimated that 171 million people will fly between March 1 and April 30, a four percent increase from the same period last year.
The incident comes as air traffic controllers are working without pay, amid a partial government shutdown. The air traffic control tower at Newark Liberty International Airport is pictured
‘Americans – who live in your districts and home states – are tired of long lines at airports, travel delays and flight cancellations caused by shutdown after shutdown,’ the group wrote in a letter over the weekend.
‘Yet, once again, air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown,’ it continued, referencing a 43-day shutdown last fall that resulted in disruptions, delays and around 10 percent of flights cut at major airports by the Federal Aviation Administration.
‘This problem is solvable and there are solutions on the table.’
In the meantime, the FAA announced it was barring helicopter traffic near major airports operating on visual separation and requiring air traffic controllers to use radar to keep the aircraft apart.
