The Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) have launched an investigation into a near-collision between two
commercial flights on a runway at Nashville International Airport.
The incident
occurred on Thursday morning, becoming the latest in a series of close calls
involving passenger planes.
According to the
FAA, the crew of Alaska
Airlines Flight 369 “discontinued their takeoff” at approximately 9:15 a.m.
CT after a Southwest
Airlines plane, Flight 2029, “was cleared to cross the end of the
same runway”. Just how close the pair of planes came to running into each
other hasn’t been specified.
Alaska Airlines
confirmed that the Boeing 737 Max 9, which was carrying 176 passengers and six
crew members, was forced to stop abruptly. So suddenly, in fact, that the crew “reported blown tires during the
braking”, although no injuries were reported, according to CNN.
“The Alaska
aircraft, on its way to Seattle, had received clearance for takeoff
from Air Traffic Control,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “We’re grateful
for the expertise of our pilots who immediately applied the brakes to prevent
the incident from escalating,” the carrier added.
In a statement of
its own, Southwest Airlines said that it is in “contact with
the FAA and NTSB and will participate in the investigation”, and that
“nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and
Employees.”
In a post
on the social media platform X, the NTSB announced that it was investigating the
“runway incursion” involving the aforementioned flights. This event marks the
NTSB’s 14th probe into such incidents involving commercial or chartered flights
since the beginning of 2023.
This mishap in Nashville
also occurred only two days after a pair of Delta Air Lines planes
collided on a taxiway at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
And, a couple of months back, a commercial flight at New York's Syracuse
Hancock International Airport was forced to abort its landing to avoid crashing
into another plane that was taking off on the same runway.
Ever since a January
2023 near-miss between two aircraft at New York’s John F. Kennedy International
Airport, awareness surrounding the incidence of runway incursions at major
airports has been heightened.
That particular close call not only necessitated
multiple investigations but also prompted a seldom-seen, daylong FAA safety
summit. It also caused investigators to advocate for the adoption of more
advanced technologies at airways to alert air traffic controllers to potential
runway collisions.
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