New York: Shit, Delta 1943, abort takeoff – near disaster at JFK airport

New York – For superstitious people, Friday the 13th is commonly considered an unlucky day. And that day on January 13 almost lived up to its reputation. Because at one of the largest airports in the world, there was not much missing from a catastrophe.

That was close, even damn close: in the end it was only round 300 meters missing to a collision between two large aircraft – one of them just raced down the runway at high speed. Of course, the question arises as to what happened on Friday evening around 8.45 p.m. on the New York John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK)one of the 30 largest airports in the world in terms of passenger numbers.

Panic instruction from air traffic controller

At that point there was one Boeing 737 of the US airline Delta Airlines en route to runway 04L to take off as flight DL1943 bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The machine was already accelerating sharply when suddenly the panicked instruction of an air traffic controller got through to the pilot’s headphones: “Shit, Delta 1943, abort takeoff!” Shortly afterwards the same sentence again: “Delta 1943, abort take-off!” This is evident from the audio recordings of the radio traffic, as the aviation portal aerotelegraph.com now reports.

But why had the pilot given such a panicked instruction? Just as the Delta Boeing accelerated An American Airlines Boeing 777 crossed the runway. The 777-200 (B772) drove – as various videos on the internet and posts on social media show – coming from the left over a taxiway over the runway on which the 737 had just started. The American Airlines plane, for its part, was on its way to the runway to start its flight to London Heathrow (flight AA106).

American machine probably had no clearance for crossing

The pilots of the Delta machine reacted just in time and brought the plane to a halt approximately 1000 feet (approximately 300 meters) from the point where the American Airlines plane crossed the runway would have. The American aviation authority FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and the traffic authority NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) then initiated a corresponding investigation into the near collision (technical terminology: close call).

The one that specializes in such incidents Portal Aviation Herald now reports that there are now initial assumptions as to how the incident could have happened. Accordingly, the American machine had clearance to cross runway 31L (taxiway K), but not for crossing runway 04L (taxiway J). According to media reports, the machine still flew to Great Britain on Friday evening. The Delta plane, on the other hand, returned to the gate and didn’t take off for the Caribbean until the next morning. The reports did not show exactly how many passengers and crew members were on board.

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