By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Air-traffic controllers cleared an Alaska Airways jet final month to take off at Tennessee’s Nashville Worldwide Airport on the identical runway the place a Southwest Airways (NYSE:) aircraft had been cleared to cross, the Nationwide Transportation Security Board stated on Wednesday.
The Sept. 12 incident prompted Alaska Airways Flight 369, a Boeing (NYSE:) 737 MAX 9 airplane with 176 folks on board, to abort takeoff to forestall a collision. The Alaska pilots shortly utilized the brakes, blowing the aircraft’s tires.
The NTSB stated a floor controller cleared the Southwest aircraft to cross Runway 13 simply after 9:13 a.m. and 23 seconds later one other controller cleared the Alaska aircraft to depart.
The Federal Aviation Administration referred inquiries to the NTSB, which is main the investigation. The FAA has a separate investigation into the incident, the place Southwest Airways Flight 2029 – a Boeing 737-700 with 141 folks onboard – was scheduled to depart for Jacksonville, Florida.
Over the past two years, a sequence of near-miss incidents have raised considerations about U.S. aviation security and the pressure on understaffed air-traffic-control operations. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker stated final month the variety of severe runway-incursion incidents had fallen by over 50%.
Monitoring web site Flightradar24 stated the Alaska aircraft was touring at 104 knots (120 mph, 193 km per hour) on the runway earlier than slowing.
The FAA stated in April it will set up new surface-awareness know-how at 4 airports together with Nashville’s by July. The FAA beforehand declined to touch upon whether or not the know-how was working.
In June, the NTSB discovered that incorrect assumptions by an air visitors controller led to a February 2023 near-collision between a FedEx (NYSE:) aircraft and a Southwest plane in Austin, Texas.
The 2 planes got here inside about 170 ft (52 meters) of one another when the FedEx Boeing 767 was pressured to fly over the Southwest 737-700 to keep away from a crash in poor visibility.
