Heroic American Airlines Pilot Averts Disaster In Orlando As ATC Puts Frontier Plane In Takeoff Path
On May 6, air traffic control cleared American Airlines flight 2473 to take off for Dallas. Then – immediately after – the same air traffic controller cleared Frontier 1734 from Denver to cross the same runway to head towards its gate.
- The American Airlines pilots noticed traffic on the runway and rejected takeoff. The controller notices what’s happened, and told the pilots to cancel takeoff. They’d already done so.
- The controller got lucky. The passengers got lucky that their pilots had the skill and situational awareness not to simply trust the instructions they’d been given. This would have been much closer otherwise.
- And the controller did not even apologize or acknowledge what had happened. The flight returned to the gate – the captain deciding it wasn’t a good idea for him to try that again right then.
Here’s air traffic control communications synced up with aircraft movements:
I’ve been increasingly concerned with air traffic control incidents. The FAA air traffic organization has badly bungled technology investments over the last 20 years. Way too much is manual, reliant on people coordinating and noticing and people make mistakes.
There are 300 near-collisions per year. Last month, for instance, we saw four planes cross in front of a jet about to take off from New York JFK and Southwest and JetBlue jets come within 300 feet of colliding on a runway at Washington National airport.
(HT: Nate V)
