The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced the day before that it was investigating yet another aviation incident after an American Airlines plane was cleared to land at the same time that an Air Canada Rouge plane was given the green light to take off. And from the same runway.
This incident occurred at the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Florida on February 16, but the first details about it became known only now — after the NTSB confirmed it was investigating the crash.
The NTSB said in a statement that the pilots of an American Airlines Boeing 737 self-initiated a go-around when they realized they could collide with Air's Airbus A321 Canada Rouge.
Officially, there were no casualties and no damage was caused. The reasons for the malfunction of the Command and Control Center are promised to be reported no earlier than in two to three weeks.
This incident will undoubtedly attract close attention after a series of recent similar cases that almost ended in disaster.
At Bob Hope Airport in Los Angeles, a Skywest Embraer 175 was taking off from the same runway that a Mesa Airlines CRJ9 was attempting to land on.
Again, at the last moment, the Mesa CRL9 pilots independently initiated a turn after seeing another aircraft on the runway. There were no reports of casualties.
In another incident, a United Airlines Boeing 777 that had just landed in Honolulu accidentally “poked out” a nose to the runway where a small Cessna landed. According to the report, the much larger 777 partially ran onto the parallel runway because it was too large to fit entirely on the air traffic controller's taxiway.
Another investigation involved a dangerous collision between a FedEx Express cargo plane and a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 at the Austin airport. The 737 pilots were cleared to take off at exactly the same time that a FedEx Boeing 767 was approaching to land on the same runway.
The Southwest plane had lifted off the ground, while the FedEx pilots were turning around to avoid collision. The two planes flew off in opposite directions, but approached each other at a distance of 300 meters.