An Alaska Airlines aircraft nearly collided with a FedEx cargo plane during an aborted landing at Newark Liberty International Airport Tuesday evening, radar data shows.

Alaska Airlines Flight 294 was ordered to perform a go-around when FedEx Flight 721 was cleared to approach an intersecting runway for landing, the FAA said in a statement.

The passenger plane cleared the FedEx charter by as little as 300 feet — close to the length of the average American football field — data from FlightRadar24 indicated.

Air traffic controllers directed the Alaska flight to reroute just seconds before it was supposed to touch down, according to audio obtained by the same software.

Michael McCormick, the former vice president of the FAA, told ABC 7 New York that the near-mishap came down to two intersecting runways.

“”It is a challenge for a tower controller to try to get that timing perfect, it doesn’t always work and that’s what happened in this case, so the tower controller waited and unfortunately, in my opinion, too long and they had to send the aircraft on a go-around,” McCormick said.

The FAA and the NTSB are probing the near crash.

The ongoing partial government shutdown has caused significant staffing shortages at a several major airports across the country — with TSA workers currently not receiving pay.

White House economists estimated that the shutdown has caused upwards of $2.5 billion in losses.

Last week, Senate Democrats blocked a bill that would have restored funding to the DHS for the fourth time in the past month.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian slammed Congress for the ongoing shutdown, calling politicians’ apparent refusal to settle the funding debacle “inexcusable.”

“We’re outraged,” Bastian seethed.

The partial shutdown entered its 33rd day on Thursday.

Two crew members of a tugboat were killed and two others were injured in what the Coast Guard described Wednesday as a “confined space incident” aboard a barge moored in southeast Alaska last weekend.

A Coast Guard news release provided limited details about what happened to the four, but said they were in a confined space aboard the freight barge Waynehoe on Sunday when other crew members from their tug, the Chukchi Sea, lost contact with them. The barge was moored about 25 miles northwest of Ketchikan.

The deceased crew members were identified as Sidney Mohorovich and Ben Fowler, according to the Coast Guard. Its news release didn’t identify the surviving crew by name. Coast Guard spokesperson Alexander Ransom later told the Associated Press in an email that both survivors were reported to be in good condition.

The parents of Mohorovich, 28, said they were told by Coast Guard officials there was methane gas present in the confined space.

“We don’t know why the series of events that led to all the people being in the confined space, if they all like went down as a team or in separate stages,” Todd Mohorovich told the AP by phone from his home in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. “I have no information on that, but what I can tell you is that the confined space had high levels of methane gas in it.”

He did not know the source of the gas or why it was present. The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to an email seeking confirmation of the presence of methane gas.

Todd and Eva Mohorovich last spoke to their son Saturday night when he told them about impending bad weather. “He said that the barge was in a spot where they were going to be able to be sheltered from that storm,” Todd Mohorovich said.

The crew planned to perform normal deck duties to make sure everything was secured ahead of the storm.

Federal regulations define “confined space” on a vessel as “a compartment of small size and limited access such as a double bottom tank … or other space which by its small size and confined nature can readily create or aggravate a hazardous exposure.” That could include a lack of oxygen.

Watchstanders at the Coast Guard’s command center in Alaska’s capital Juneau received a mayday call at 9:14 a.m. local time Sunday, informing them that the crew of the Chukchi Sea had lost contact with the barge, the Coast Guard said. The tugboat crew recovered the body of one of the victims and helped both survivors escape the confined space while the Coast Guard was on its way to the scene.

The barge was then towed to Ketchikan, where the confined space “was able to be safely cleared for the recovery of the second deceased crew member,” Ransom told AP.

The causes of death were not released, and the bodies were sent to Anchorage for autopsies.

“Our deepest condolences are with the families and colleagues of the crewmembers affected by this tragic incident,” said Capt. Stanley Fields, commander of the Coast Guard sector for Southeast Alaska, in a statement. “This is a heartbreaking reminder that confined spaces on vessels can contain extremely dangerous, invisible hazards.”

Sidney Mohorovich was one month into his new job with Hamilton Marine Construction.

The company didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Mohorovich, a large equipment mechanic, was on his first job in Alaska. He lived in Deming, Washington, with his fiancee ahead of their planned June wedding.

He previously was a logger and welder, and before that he learned how to build houses and do electrical work. “He could pretty much figure anything out,” his mother said.

“He was loved by so many,” Eva Mohorovich said of her son’s outgoing personality. “Just an exceptional human being, smarty, witty, funny, loving.”

It was in his heart to lend a hand to people in need, and he was unselfish in so many ways, his father said.

“We’re just really thankful for who he was,” Todd Mohorovich said. “I wouldn’t change a thing in the life that we’ve all shared together, regardless of this the tragedy at this time. If we were to change something, it would lead to other changes that we don’t know about.”

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The first oil and gas lease sale held in years in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska was touted by officials Wednesday as the strongest to date, drawing hundreds of bids and interest from major oil companies despite pending legal challenges from environmentalists and some Indigenous groups.

It was the first sale in the reserve since 2019 and the first under a law passed by Congress last year calling for at least five lease sales there over a 10-year period, amid a renewed push by the Trump administration to expand oil and gas development in Alaska. The U.S. Department of Interior said 11 companies submitted bids on 187 tracts covering 1.3 million acres (526,000 hectares). The sale offered 625 tracts over about 5.5 million acres (2.2 million hectares).

State political leaders cheered the result, with Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy calling it a “major win for our state and our country.” Business, oil and gas and resource development groups issued a joint statement that said the “strong participation and unprecedented results underscore renewed investor confidence in Alaska’s North Slope and the state’s long-term resource potential.” Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an advocacy group whose members include North Slope leaders, called the sale an important milestone.

The petroleum reserve is home to the large Willow oil project, authorized in 2023 by the Biden administration and currently under development by ConocoPhillips Alaska. The reserve, roughly the size of Indiana on Alaska’s North Slope, provides habitat for an array of wildlife, including caribou, bears, wolves and millions of migratory birds.

Critics of the drilling push have raised concerns about the potential impacts on parts of the reserve previously designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values, including around Teshekpuk Lake. The lake is the largest in Alaska’s arctic region.

Kristen Miller, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, in a statement called the region “one of the last truly wild places on Earth, home to millions of migrating birds, vast caribou herds and Indigenous communities whose lives are woven into this land.”

“We will spend every ounce of our energy making sure those leases never become drill pads,” she said.

Several lawsuits challenging the lease sale, the management plan underpinning it or related actions are pending.

Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is representing conservation groups in one of the cases, in statement said amid climate change and high energy prices, “it’s clear that the best way forward is switching to low-cost, clean energy sources – not attempting to produce more expensive, ecologically destructive Arctic oil.”

In another case, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason this week stayed the Trump administration’s cancellation of a right of way issued to Nuiqsut Trilateral, Inc., an organization formed by the Native Village of Nuiqsut, Kuukpik Corporation and the City of Nuiqsut, until the group’s lawsuit challenging the cancellation is resolved.

The right of way, issued late in the Biden administration, allowed for restricting oil and gas development and was aimed at protecting the Teshekpuk caribou herd and habitat across roughly 1 million acres (405,000 hectares).

In the cancellation, a deputy Interior secretary cited “serious and fundamental legal deficiencies” in the issuance of the right of way.

Kevin Pendergast, Alaska state director for the Bureau of Land Management, did not mention Gleason’s decision during the livestreamed bid openings. The agency, in response to questions from The Associated Press, confirmed in a statement that lease offerings within the right of way were included in the sale.

“Any lease issuance for tracts within the right of way will be consistent with the court’s order,” the statement said.

Travis Annatoyn, an attorney for Nuiqsut Trilateral, said in a statement that the Interior Department told the group it “will not authorize activities prohibited by the Right-of-Way, absent Nuiqsut Trilateral’s waiver,” as long as the stay is in effect.

“The issuance of leases in the subject acreage is prohibited by the Right-of-Way, so we expect that leases will not be awarded in that acreage absent further action from NTI and appropriate discussions between NTI and Interior,” the statement said.