Shocking plunge by Southwest flight from Southern California was to avoid another aircraft

A traveler walks through the Southwest Airlines ticketing counter area at the Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, April 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

LAS VEGAS — Passengers aboard a Southwest Airline jet that took a dramatic plunge to avoid an oncoming aircraft were told by the pilot that they nearly struck another plane before landing safely in Las Vegas.

The Boeing 737 jet dropped hundreds of feet in a little over 30 seconds during a flight on Friday, according to a flight tracking website.

Caitlin Burdi, who was on the flight, said it took a short plunge and then a more drastic drop as passengers screamed in terror.

“We really thought we were plummeting to a plane crash,” Burdi told Fox News Digital in an interview at the Las Vegas airport. She said the pilot told passengers they had nearly collided with another plane.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the flight, Southwest 1496, was responding to an on board alert about another aircraft in its vicinity. The FAA is investigating. Southwest said the crew responded to two alerts that required the pilot to climb then descend. The flight left Hollywood Burbank Airport just before noon.

Another passenger, comedian Stef Zamorano, said she saw a woman who wasn’t wearing her seat belt shoot up and out of her seat, and a man next to her was clutching her arm. A woman across the aisle was panicking, she said.

“She was pretty much verbalizing how we all felt, saying, `I want to get off this plane. I want to be on the ground’,” Zamorano told The Associated Press on Friday. Another woman was panicking and saying she wanted “to get off this plane.”

The plane was in the same airspace near Burbank as a Hawker Hunter Mk. 58, according to the flight tracking site, FlightAware. Records show it is owned by Hawker Hunter Aviation, a British defense contracting company.

The company didn’t respond to messages on Friday and Saturday seeking comment.

Southwest said the flight continued to Las Vegas, “where it landed uneventfully.” The airline said that it is working with the FAA “to further understand the circumstances” of the event.

This close call is just the latest incident to raise questions about aviation safety in the wake of January’s midair collision over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.