An Alaska Airlines passenger plane narrowly avoided a mid-air collision with a FedEx cargo aircraft after aborting its landing at Newark Airport on Tuesday evening. The incident happened at around 8:17 pm.
Both aircraft were approaching landing on intersecting runways when Air Traffic Control suddenly instructed the Alaska Airlines flight to "go around," according to the flight tracking data.
The passenger plane was just seconds away from touching down when it was told to pull up, while the FedEx aircraft was already near the crossing runway at the same time, as per Flightradar footage.
The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into the "close call" between an Alaska Airlines Flight 294 and a FedEx Flight 721.
Both planes were supposed to land one after the other on runways that cross each other. The plan was for the FedEx cargo plane, coming from Memphis, to land first on Runway 29, and then the Alaska Airlines passenger flight, coming from Portland, to land on Runway 22L, which intersects with it.
But as the planes got closer, air traffic controllers realised that the Alaska flight was too close and might not be able to land safely behind the FedEx plane as planned. The Alaska aircraft was already about 300 feet above the ground.
The Alaska plane then pulled up and flew over the FedEx aircraft and went to 325 feet. At that moment, it passed over the FedEx aircraft, which was near the runway.
"It is a challenge for a tower controller to try to get that timing perfect, it doesn't always work and that's what happened in this case, so the tower controller waited and unfortunately, in my opinion, too long and they had to send the aircraft on a go-around," Michael McCormick, the former vice president of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), told The NY Post.
This incident happened just two weeks after another aircraft mishap involving Singapore Airlines and Spirit Airlines on March 3 when a Singapore Airlines plane accidentally hit the tail of a parked Spirit Airlines plane.
The FAA is currently investigating the matter.
