There was a close call between two planes at Reagan National Airport on Tuesday morning — just a month after a midair collision between an Army helicopter and a commercial jet over the Potomac River killed all 67 people aboard.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration statement, it happened around 8:20 a.m.
An incoming American Airlines flight from Boston was told to perform a “go-around” maneuver by an air traffic controller to make sure there was enough space between the incoming flight and a departing flight that was using the same runway.
The FAA considers the go-around to be a safe tactic that “discontinues the landing approach and returns the aircraft to an altitude and configuration to safely make another approach.”
It’s unclear precisely how close the planes got.
WTOP’s Dan Ronan, a commercial pilot, said regulations require that an entire runway must be cleared before another can land.
“So the landing was canceled, (American Flight 2246) climbed and accelerated away from DCA, avoiding another plane that was ready to take off,” Ronan said.
At Chicago’s Midway Airport, there was a near miss shortly before 9 a.m. that same morning.
The Associated Press reports that pilots on a Southwest Airlines flight attempting to land were forced to climb back into the sky to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway.
Airport webcam video posted to X shows the Southwest plane approaching a runway just before 9 a.m. Tuesday before its nose abruptly pulls up. A smaller jet is seen crossing the runway that the passenger plane was set to use.
Southwest Flight 2504 safely landed “after the crew performed a precautionary go-around to avoid a possible conflict with another aircraft that entered the runway,” an airline spokesperson said in an email. “The crew followed safety procedures and the flight landed without incident.”
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board say they are investigating.
The past few weeks have seen four major aviation disasters in North America. They include the Feb. 6 crash of a commuter plane in Alaska that killed all 10 people on board and the Jan. 26 midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft.
A medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed Jan. 31 into a Philadelphia neighborhood. That crash killed seven people, including all those aboard, and injured 19 others.
Twenty-one people were injured Feb. 17 when a Delta flight flipped and landed on its roof at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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