FedEx, Southwest Planes May Have Come Within 100 Feet of Each Other During Close Call

The event played out over about two minutes. The FedEx flight started to climb and called for the Southwest flight to abort its takeoff, Ms. Homendy said. “That was pretty heroic of the FedEx pilot,” she said. 

Although the Southwest flight continued to take off, the two planes were able to stay clear of one another, avoiding what Ms. Homendy said could have been a tragic accident. The Cancún, Mexico-bound Southwest flight had 123 passengers and five crew members, the airline said.  

Investigators at the NTSB as well as the Federal Aviation Administration are still probing what led to the near-collision, but Ms. Homendy said it may have been avoidable.

A FedEx spokeswoman said the company appreciated the efforts from its flight crew to land the Austin flight safely. In a message to employees Monday, Southwest Chief Executive

Bob Jordan

commended the Southwest crew and said the airline would fully participate as the NTSB and FAA look into the incident.

Dozens of other airports have surveillance systems that use radar and satellites to help air-traffic controllers track movements of planes and vehicles on airport surfaces. The FAA funds and manages that technology, which the agency has said helps air-traffic controllers track movements on runways and taxiways. 

That system is in place at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and alerted a controller last month when an American Airlines plane began to cross a runway where a Delta flight was about to take off, Ms. Homendy said. Austin’s airport doesn’t have the same system.

“There’s technology that is available that could have been in Austin to really prevent this,” she said.

When Southwest pilots told air-traffic control they were at the runway and ready Saturday, FedEx’s

Boeing Co.

767 was about 4 miles away from the end of the runway, Ms. Homendy said. 

That distance isn’t unusual when conditions are good, but it was nearly dark at the time and visibility was poor due to weather conditions, something investigators plan to scrutinize, she said.  

Air-traffic controllers could see the FedEx flight, but couldn’t see the Southwest flight preparing to take off on the surface, Ms. Homendy said. 

The incident at JFK in January was another close call. After realizing that the Delta flight was barreling toward another plane, a controller rapidly called for the flight to cancel its takeoff. The Delta plane came within 1,400 feet of the American jet, and stopped about 500 feet before the intersection where the American flight had crossed, Ms. Homendy said. 

Aviation safety investigators have focused on preventing close calls on runways in recent years. Ms. Homendy said the safety board has investigated 17 such incidents in the past decade involving both commercial and private flights.  

Near-collisions as serious as the ones at JFK and Austin are rare. 

The FAA has said it has taken measures to bolster runway safety over the years. For example, it developed a technology that uses runway lights to signal potentially unsafe situations to pilots and airport vehicle drivers, according to a description from the agency. 

One factor that could hinder information gathering in both investigations is that data from voice recorders that capture audio from airplane cockpits wasn’t immediately pulled, and was likely overwritten on all four aircraft involved in the two incidents, Ms. Homendy said. That is one reason the NTSB has advocated for recorders that can capture 25 hours worth of data, rather than the current two hours of recording capability. 

The safety board’s investigation will consider a range of factors, Ms. Homendy said, but the two close calls were different. 

“We’re certainly concerned, which is why we’re investigating both,” she said. But, “I don’t think we can say there’s a trend.”

Write to Alison Sider at [email protected] and Micah Maidenberg at [email protected]