What you should know
- The agency says the plane, Southwest Airlines Flight 147, veered off course in downtown Queens around 1 p.m. Saturday, March 23, as severe storms hit the area.
- An air traffic controller told the crew to perform a turnaround at LaGuardia Airport, which is when an approaching flight aborts its landing procedure and returns to the queue.
- “We are reviewing the event as part of our safety systems,” an airline spokesperson said.
NEW YORK — The Federal Aviation Administration says it is investigating whether a Southwest Airlines flight may have flown too close to an air traffic control tower at LaGuardia when it veered off course during turbulent weather last month.
The agency says the plane, Southwest Airlines Flight 147, veered off course in downtown Queens around 1 p.m. Saturday, March 23, as severe storms hit the area. An air traffic controller told the crew to perform a turnaround at LaGuardia Airport, which is when an approaching flight aborts its landing procedure and returns to the queue.
The flight ended up diverting to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. He landed safely.
No injuries were reported.
Southwest confirmed the diverted landing in a statement, saying the flight had encountered turbulence and low visibility at LaGuardia. He returned to LaGuardia after a brief stop in Baltimore.
“We are reviewing the event as part of our safety systems,” an airline spokesperson said.
Aviation experts say that with congested skies, relatively short runways and sometimes adverse weather conditions, LaGuardia has a relatively strong safety record.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched an investigation into near-misses at U.S. airports last fall, and noted an increase in such incidents : Six near misses in 2023 alone. The FAA identified 23 of the most serious types of near misses in the last fiscal year, which ended Oct. 1, up from 16 the year before and 11 ago one of each.
Independent estimates suggest those figures vastly underestimate those incidents.
A particularly terrifying one occurred in February 2023 in Austin, Texas. During poor visibility in the early morning hours, a FedEx cargo plane preparing to land flew over the top of a Southwest Airlines plane that was taking off. The NTSB has estimated that they came within about 100 feet of crashing.
An air traffic controller had authorized both planes to use the same runway. In other recent incidents, pilots appeared to be to blame. The latter included an incident at JFK airport in January 2023.
The pilots of an American Airlines plane taxied onto the wrong runway, into the path of another plane that was taking off, after the captain became distracted and confused with takeoff instructions and the co-pilot lost track of the location of his plane. plane, according to published documents. earlier this year as part of an ongoing investigation.
2024-04-05 02:26:37
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