
SAN FRANCISCO — Two planes aborted touchdown at San Francisco Worldwide Airport final week after pilots noticed a Southwest Airways jet taxiing over runways the place the opposite planes had been given permission to land.
An air visitors controller advised Southwest pilots that they need to not have been on the runways throughout the Could 19 incident.
The Federal Aviation Administration mentioned Thursday that the Southwest aircraft left the runway as different planes handed immediately overhead and that the choice to abort landings was “precautionary.”
“The FAA has investigated the occasions and decided that the suitable steps had been taken to make sure secure operations,” the company mentioned.
The Nationwide Transportation Security Board mentioned it was not investigating the matter.
The incident comes after half a dozen near-calls over the previous few months, that are being investigated by safety officers. This features a case in February by which a FedEx aircraft flew about 100 toes over the tip of a Southwest jet in Austin, Texas, after an air visitors controller allowed each planes to make use of the identical runway.
On this month’s incident, an incoming United Airways aircraft flew just some hundred toes over San Francisco Bay earlier than the pilots noticed the Southwest jet on the identical runway and determined to abort the touchdown.
Shortly thereafter, the crew of an incoming Alaska Airways aircraft noticed the identical Southwest jet crossing a second, parallel runway, and the pilots additionally aborted their touchdown.
Each the United and Alaska planes circled the aircraft and landed safely.
In line with a recording picked up by LiveATC.com, the air visitors controller advised the crew of the Southwest jet, “You shouldn’t be on the runway.” When one of many pilots tried to clarify, the air visitors controller minimize him off by saying, “I would like no quarrels.”
The incident was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco Airport was Scene of a scary close to miss in 2017when pilots of an Air Canada jet mistook a taxiway for his or her runway and nearly landed on high of 4 different planes ready to take off.
Regardless of the latest bottlenecks, the performing FAA chief mentioned the nation’s air journey system is secure, noting that there hadn’t been a deadly crash by a US airline since 2009.
However issues over the shut talks prompted the FAA to carry a “security summit” in March. The company introduced this week that it’s investing $100 million in enhancements at 12 airports — however not San Francisco cut back the variety of runway incursions when an plane or airport car is on a runway when it shouldn’t be.