(PatriotWise.com) — There has been a near-miss incident at a Texas airport. Two planes were cleared to use a runway at the same time, forcing one of them to change course. A FedEx cargo plane was preparing to land at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport at the that a Southwest Airlines passenger flight was due to take off.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a statement saying the FedEx pilot “discontinued the landing and initiated a climb out.” The cargo aircraft then circled before landing safely just over 10 minutes later. The Southwest Airlines flight also took off without further incident. In a tweet on February 4th, the National Transportation Safety Board said it is now investigating “a possible runway incursion.” The FAA is also launching an inquiry.
The incident occurred only weeks after the FAA launched a separate investigation into a collision at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. On January 17th, a JetBlue passenger plane was proceeding to the runway when it clipped the rear end of a parked aircraft. The jet then returned to the airport where passengers were transferred to another plane. The FAA said both aircraft involved were JetBlue Airbus 320 models.
Just days before that event, two planes filled with passengers almost collided at the same airport. On this occasion, a Delta Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic had a surprise encounter with an American Airlines plane bound for Britain. Robert Sumwalt, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said, “What we know so far is that the American Airlines 777 was apparently instructed to taxi to runway 4 left. It appears that that airplane did not make the right turn, but instead continued across an active runway.”
Although the United States has some of the best flight infrastructure in the world, it also has the highest number of accidents. From 1945 to 2022, there were 864 fatal incidents involving aircraft in America, compared to 539 in Russia in second place.
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