A report from U.S. officials has found that two planes came within a kilometre of each other at a Florida airport after air traffic control gave an American Airlines jet permission to land on the same runway that an Air Canada Rouge jet was about to take off from.
The incident happened just before 9 p.m. on Feb. 16 at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in the Tampa Bay area. In a preliminary report published on Thursday, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said air traffic control had cleared the American Airlines jet from Charlotte, N.C. to land on Runway 14.
However, air traffic control had also cleared an Air Canada Rouge plane heading to Toronto for takeoff on the same runway, despite the fact that the American Airlines jet was on a final approach towards the runway, less than 5.5 kilometres away.
When the American Airlines jet was 2.8 kilometres away, the controller confirmed that the Air Canada Rouge plane was to takeoff from the runway. About 53 seconds later, the American Airlines pilots aborted the landing, known in aviation as a "go-around."
"What was the reason for your go-around?" the controller could be heard asking the American Airlines pilot on the air traffic control recording.
"A guy was still on the runway," the American Airlines pilot said, referring to the Air Canada Rouge jet that was about to take off.
"That's a good reason," the controller replied.
At their closest point, there two aircraft were around 1.1 kilometres away from each other. There were no injuries and no damage to either aircraft, but this report comes at a time when U.S. airports have been seeing an uptick in close calls, also known as runway incursions.
On Wednesday, the NTSB and the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) held a safety summit to discuss these near-misses with representative from the industry, union and aviation experts.
Since January, the NTSB has been investigating six runway incursions. Last month in Austin, Texas, a FedEx cargo plane came within 30 metres of a southwest Airlines jet. In Burbank, Calif., two planes came within 90 metres of each other after a controller had cleared a small airliner to land at the same runway another was supposed to take off from.
There has only been one commercial aviation fatality in the U.S. since 2009, but NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said these recent incidents should serve as a "wake-up call."
"There have been far too many close calls and near-collisions recently, any of which could’ve had devastating consequences with precious lives lost," she said at the summit on Wednesday.
Neither the FAA nor the NTSB have identified an underlying cause to explain the spike in runway incursions, but Homendy called for adequate training and re-training for workers in the aviation industry joining and re-joining the workforce after the pandemic-induced layoffs and retirements. The FAA has also pledged to review runway incursion data to identify the underlying factors.
“There is no question that aviation is amazingly safe, but vigilance can never take the day off,” acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen said in a statement Wednesday. “We must ask ourselves difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions, even when we are confident that the system is sound.”
With files from The Associated Press.
