Two planes have close call at Florida airport, NTSB says

A passenger jet final month was cleared by air visitors controllers to land on the identical runway of a Sarasota, Florida, airport {that a} second airplane had additionally been cleared to take off from, officers mentioned Thursday, detailing one other in a string of comparable shut calls at U.S. airports this 12 months.

In accordance with the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, at about 9 p.m. EST on Feb. 16, Air Canada Rouge Flight No. 1633 certain for Toronto, Canada, was cleared to take off from the airport’s Runway 14. Nonetheless, American Airways Flight No. 2172 from Charlotte, North Carolina, had been additionally cleared to land on the identical runway.

The pilots of the American Airways flight finally aborted their touchdown, the NTSB mentioned in a preliminary report. The closest the 2 planes obtained to one another was inside six-tenths of a mile, the NTSB mentioned.

The Air Canada flight was carrying 188 passengers and 6 crew members, whereas the American Airways flight had 172 passengers and 6 crew members aboard, the NTSB reported. There have been no accidents.  

The NTSB didn’t speculate on what triggered the mix-up. The company mentioned it had put collectively an air visitors management group to analyze the incident, with the help of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nationwide Air Visitors Controllers Affiliation.

The preliminary report comes simply sooner or later after the FAA held an emergency security summit to handle the myriad of current close to misses on airport runways, the primary such emergency summit in 14 years.

“I feel I communicate for all of us, and definitely the touring public, that these occasions are regarding,” Performing FAA Administrator Billy Nolen mentioned on the summit.

There have been at the very least 9 such shut calls up to now this 12 months, the newest occurring on March 7 at Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport in Virginia, when a airplane taxied throughout a runway that one other airplane had been cleared to take off from.