Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
The air traffic controller on duty when FedEx and Southwest planes nearly collided earlier this year in Texas told investigators that he expected the airliner to take off more quickly -- before the incoming FedEx plane reached the same runway.
That is because in his four years working the tower at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, the controller said, Southwest planes usually took off as soon as they got permission.
"But hindsight being 20/20," controller Damian Campbell told investigators, he "definitely could have held them," referring to making the Southwest crew wait.
Campbell said in a transcript released Wednesday that he couldn't even see the Southwest plane through the dense early morning fog on Feb. 4. The FedEx pilots spotted it at the last second and aborted their landing.
The planes missed each other by about 100 feet (30 meters).
The National Transportation Safety Board released transcripts of interviews and other details of its investigation but did not state a probable cause for the harrowing close call. That determination is expected early next year.
The near-disaster in Austin is the scariest among more than a half-dozen close calls that the NTSB has investigated this year.
The surge in such incidents prompted the Federal Aviation Administration -- which hires air traffic controllers and manages the nation's airspace -- to convene a "safety summit" of aviation industry officials this spring.
A panel of independent experts concluded this month that the FAA needs better staffing, equipment and technology to cope with a surge in serious close calls. The panel said aviation's margin of safety is shrinking.
The captain of the FedEx plane flying into Austin said he was "irritated" and "perplexed" when the controller cleared Southwest to take off from runway 18-left, the one he was approaching.
"My initial response was an expletive, like `What's he doing?"' Hugo Carvajal III told investigators. Still, he assumed that the Southwest plane "was going to be well down the runway" by the time he touched down.
Carvajal's first officer, Robert Bradeen Jr., estimated they were 100 to 150 feet (30 to 45 meters) above the runway when he saw the Southwest jet -- first a light, then a silhouette of a wing.
"I think I said, 'Go around, go around, go around" to the captain, Bradeen said, meaning pull up and fly away. He used the radio to tell the Southwest crew to abort their takeoff, but they did not.
Asked what saved the day -- special training or something else, Bradeen said, "I think it was more experience and just the combination of luck that I happened to look out (the cockpit window) at the right time."
At a recent congressional hearing, the president of the union representing air traffic controllers complained about understaffing and frequent overtime leading to fatigue.
Campbell, a Navy veteran who had been a controller for 13 years at the time of the Austin incident, said he was on a mandatory six-day work week.
Austin-Bergstrom doesn't have the latest technology, called ASDE-X, for tracking planes and vehicles on the ground -- which could have helped prevent the February close call.
"We had this dense ground fog ... you couldn't see anything," Campbell told investigators. He couldn't see the Southwest jet from the tower.
"It became a concern when I didn't hear Southwest's engines" revving for takeoff on a flight to Cancun, Mexico, he said. "And at that point, it became a critical issue."
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.