ARLINGTON, VA — An American Airlines flight leaving for Boston’s Logan International Airport was ordered to abort takeoff to avoid crashing into another landing plane.
The incident happened around 10:21 a.m. Wednesday morning at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.
“An air traffic controller canceled the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134 because another aircraft was cleared to land on an intersecting runway,” the FAA said in a written statement. “The FAA will investigate.”
It was a smaller King Air plane.
Tower: “American 2134 cancel takeoff clearance. (inaudible) zero, alpha, alpha, go around, go around.”
American: “Rejecting the takeoff 2134.”
King Air: “Zero alpha alpha, cannot go around, we are already on the ground.”
Tower: “American 2134 do you want to go back to the gate?”
American: “We need to talk to maintenance, but yeah, I think we were above 80 knots so we’re going to have to get an inspection.”
It was just a month ago that a similar incident took place at Reagan when a JetBlue plane and a Southwest Airlines plane almost collided as they crossed over the same runway.
The FAA is investigating both situations.
Aviation expert Tom Kinton, President of Kinton Aviation and former CEO of Massport said yesterday’s incident could have been even worse than the one at DCA a month ago.
“This was even closer even though the distance was not. the fact that American was going 110 knots and had to slam the brakes on. almost got to what they call a point of no return where the aircraft is going too fast and you have to commit to take the airplane off because if you try to stop it you’re going to go off the runway. So it clearly the system did an alert on that one because in the aircraft, you can hear the controllers yelling abort, abort, and asking the King Air which was the landing aircraft to go around but they said it was too late, we’re already on the ground. So the controllers clearly lost separation of these two airplanes.”
Kinton shared this close call is something to be concerned about. He said the system is calling out for help right now and although there have been second chances now, the control towers might not always be so lucky.
“There’s been incident after incident around the country of these near misses and loss of separation in the control tower. and you only get so many chances until you ultimately are going to have the worse scenario which is two aircraft impacting each other on an active runway.”
American Airlines said in a statement, “The safety of our customers and team members is our top priority, and we’re grateful to our crew for their professionalism. We will support the FAA in its investigation.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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