An incident that could have easily become the United States’ worst airliner tragedy in decades was narrowly averted Friday when a two airliners at JFK Airport nearly collided as one crossed into a runway while another was in middle of taking off.
At around 8:45 pm on Friday, a Delta aircraft was heading down a runway when an American Airlines plane drove into the runway – directly in the path of the accelerating Delta plane.
The Delta pilots slammed on the brakes while the American Airlines pilots hit the gas to create space, and tragedy was just barely avoided; the Delta plane carrying more than 150 people came to a stop just 1,000 feet from the American Airlines aircraft.
The Delta plane, identified as Flight 1943, returned to the gate and ordered all passengers off the plane, with the flight rescheduled for Saturday and passengers given free hotel stays by the airline.
Meanwhile, American Airlines has not commented on the incident. The plane involved – Flight 106 heading to London – remained on schedule, taking off on Friday and landing in London at its scheduled time.
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13 Responses
The story doesn’t say whose mistake it was. Was it a traffic controller or a computer error?
The story doesn’t say whose mistake it was. Was it a traffic controller or a computer error? Think if it was a Tesla on auto pilot: would it be able to stop? Humans are still better!
Pete Buttigieg is doing a great job. He is the best and brightest that President Biden has to offer.
Re yaapchik’s second comment: you don’t have enough data to support your final statement.
March 27, 1977 all over again:- Tenerife airport all over again.
But this time no excuse of foggy weather & diverted flights:- Likeliest explanation is someone was being מחלל שבת by being on 1 or both of these flights, but got spared, since שרפה wouldn’t be appropriate for חילול שבת which carries סקילה
Huju, humans were created by Hashem, not by scientists in China. G-d don’t make no junk.
@Yaapchik this wouldnt happen to a tesla plane in the fist place
Yaapchik, you didn’t see the video nor pay attention. The Delta plane was already on the takeoff run, IOW it had all the clearance in the world. The AA plane was merely getting into position, and actually did not have clearance to cross.
Delta wouldn’t mind paying for everyone’s hotels because they know AA will probably pay for it themselves.
To yaapchik: If Hashem don’t make no junk, who made it?
Now that the audio came out, seems as if the AA pilot monitoring was told to proceed to runway 31. The Delta pilot monitoring was given clearance for takeoff. At no point was the AA plane told that they were crossing an active runway .
Furthermore when the almost accident was BH averted, ATC told the AA pilot monitoring that they had to call the tower due to possible deviation. AA pilot monitoring ask ATC, weren’t we told runaway 31 at which point ATC said will have to listen to the tapes .
Well, we listen to the tapes and lo and behold AA was told to proceed to runway 31 without being told of an active runway, runway 4.
I’ve been listening to ATC for a while and, at least on the ATC side it sounds like ATC did something wrong by probably not mentioning that runway 4 was the active runway. It also sounded as if ATC gave clearance to AA for the wrong runway because ATC told AA, runway 4 is the active runway, which prompted the question from AA but you told us 31.
Now, should the AA pilot controlling have known that they were going to be crossing over runway 4 and therefore at least stop to look or do they rely on ATC, I guess we’ll hear that.
the commenters here appear to be unfamiliar with aviation… there are numerous human and automated systems to avoid this, this was sure a human error, the question is by whom.
“Likeliest explanation is someone was being מחלל שבת by being on 1 or both of these flights”
Your stupidity is profound. It appears that the AA flight crossing on the other runway had not been cleared by another air traffic controller. The hero was the Controller who aborted the Delta takeoff ..
Not getting involved: Pete Buttigieg isn’t in charge of operations at JFK Airport.