Orlando air traffic controller stops pilots mistakenly trying to take off on a taxiway
ORLANDO — The pilots of a Boeing 737 started to mistakenly take off from a taxiway at a Florida airport on Thursday before an air traffic controller told them to stop, the Federal Aviation Administration said, announcing it was investigating the incident.
Southwest Airlines Flight 3278 was cleared to take off on a runway at Orlando International Airport, bound for Albany, New York, the FAA said in a statement. The plane, however, started to accelerate on a parallel taxiway instead, prompting an air traffic controller to cancel the takeoff clearance.
Taxiways are used by planes to travel between gates and runways, but are not intended for take offs or landings.
'The Crew mistook the surface for the nearby runway,' the airline said in a statement. 'Southwest is engaged with the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) and FAA to understand the circumstances of the event.'
The 737 stopped safely and no other aircraft were involved, Southwest said. The airline later flew the passengers to Albany on a different plane.
Thursday's episode comes after a series of incidents in recent weeks, including near misses, crash landings and accidents, including the fatal collision of an American Airlines plane and a US Army helicopter in Washington, DC.On Wednesday the NTSB released a report on the February 6 crash of a Bering Air regional flight in Alaska, which killed all 10 people onboard. According to the NTSB, the Cessna Grand Caravan was overweight before it took off. The plane was initially reported missing but was found the next day on ice floating in Alaska's Norton Sound.And on Thursday Canada's Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on a February 17 incident that saw a Delta Air Lines regional jet flipping over as it landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport.Passenger were left 'hanging like bats' but all 80 on board — passengers and crew — survived.On February 25, Southwest Flight 2504, from Omaha, was landing on Chicago Midway Airport's runway 31C when a private Bombardier Challenger 350 crossed the runway in front of it.The pilots of the private jet told investigators they thought they were in the right place and crossing a different runway at the time of the incident, according to a preliminary report released by the NTSB.At their closest point, the two plane's GPS antennas were separated by about 200 feet, the NTSB reports. — CNN
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
18 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
No deaths as skydiving plane with 20 aboard crashes in Tennessee: US authorities
No one was killed, but several people were injured and taken to hospital Sunday when a skydiving plane carrying 20 passengers and crew crashed in the US state of Tennessee, authorities said. A twin-engine plane used for skydiving expeditions crashed shortly after midday in Tullahoma, south of Nashville, according to local and federal officials. 'There were no casualties,' city spokesman Lyle Russell said in a statement sent to AFP. He said a total of 20 passengers and crew were onboard the DeHaviland DH-6 Twin Otter when it crashed at the Tullahoma Regional Airport at around 12:30 pm (1730 GMT). 'Three were sent for medical treatment via helicopter and one sent by ground transport for more serious injuries to local hospitals,' he said, adding that 'other minor injuries were treated by first responders on scene.' Russell said that 'no ground facilities or airport facilities were damaged and there were no injuries reported from the ground.' The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the crash, while the Tennessee Highway Patrol said on X that its troopers were assisting police at the scene. Images posted on social media by the highway patrol showed a small, white plane with blue trim with its nose buried into the grass and its tail and a wing broken off behind it, with police vehicles with flashing lights parked nearby.
Asharq Al-Awsat
6 days ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel Strikes Syria After Projectiles Fired, Holds Sharaa Responsible
Israel has carried out its first airstrikes in Syria in nearly a month, saying it hit weapons belonging to the government in retaliation for the firing of two projectiles towards Israel and holding interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa responsible. Damascus said Israeli strikes caused "heavy human and material losses", reiterating that Syria does not pose a threat to any regional party and stressing the need to end the presence of armed groups and establish state control in the south. Israel had not struck Syria since early May - a month marked by US President Donald Trump's meeting with Sharaa, the lifting of US sanctions, and direct Syrian-Israeli contacts to calm tensions, as reported by Reuters last week. Israel has bombed Syria frequently this year. Israel has also moved troops into areas of the southwest, where it has said it won't allow the new government's security forces to deploy. The projectiles Israel reported fired from Syria were the first since longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was toppled. The Israeli military said the two projectiles fell in open areas. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he held the Syrian president "directly responsible for any threat and fire toward the State of Israel". A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said the accuracy of the reports of shelling towards Israel had not yet been verified. "We believe that there are many parties that may seek to destabilize the region to achieve their own interests," the Syrian Foreign Ministry added, as reported by the state news agency. A Syrian official told Reuters such parties included "remnants of Assad-era militias linked to Iran, which have long been active in the Quneitra area" and have "a vested interest in provoking Israeli retaliation as a means of escalating tensions and undermining current stabilization efforts". Several Arab and Palestinian media outlets circulated a claim of responsibility from a little-known group named "Martyr Mohammed Deif Brigades," an apparent reference to Hamas' military leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in 2024. Reuters could not independently verify the statement. The Syrian state news agency and security sources reported Israeli strikes targeting sites in the Damascus countryside and Quneitra and Daraa provinces. Local residents contacted by Reuters said Israeli shelling targeted agricultural areas in the Wadi Yarmouk region. They described increased tensions in recent weeks, including reported Israeli incursions into villages, where residents have reportedly been barred from sowing their crops. An Israeli strike also hit a former Syrian army base near the city of Izraa, a Syrian source said. Israel has said its goals in Syria include protecting the Druze, a religious minority with followers in both countries. Israel, which has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since the 1967 Middle East war, bombed Syria frequently during the last decade of Assad's rule, targeting the sway of his Iranian allies. The newly-appointed US envoy to Syria said last week he believed peace between Syria and Israel was achievable. Around the same time that Israel reported the projectiles from Syria, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile from Yemen. Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said they targeted Israel's Jaffa with a ballistic missile. The group says it has been launching attacks against Israel in support of Palestinians during the Israeli war in Gaza.
Arab News
20-05-2025
- Arab News
Passenger jet had to abort takeoff to avoid runway collision at New York's LaGuardia Airport
When a passenger jet roaring down the runway toward takeoff at New York's LaGuardia Airport had to slam on the brakes earlier this month because another plane was still on the runway, Renee Hoffner and all the other passengers were thrown forward in their seats. Hoffner wound up in the emergency room the next day after the near miss on May 6 because her neck started hurting and her left arm went numb. 'The stop was as hard as any car accident I've been in,' Hoffner said. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that they are investigating the incident in which a Republic Airways jet had to abort takeoff and slam to a stop because a United Airlines plane was still taxiing across the runway. The close call happened despite the airport being equipped with an advanced surface radar system that's designed to help prevent such close calls. In audio from the tower that ABC obtained from the website the air traffic controller said to the pilot of the Republic Airways jet: 'Sorry, I thought United had cleared well before that.' At the time that controller was directing the Republic Airways jet to takeoff, a ground controller on a different radio frequency was directing the United plane to a new taxiway after it missed the first one it was supposed to use to exit the runway. When the passengers got off the plane after the close call at 12:35 a.m., Hoffner said the gate agents refused to even give them hotel vouchers for the night because they blamed the weather even though another passenger said she had an app on her phone that showed another plane was on the runway. Hoffner said she's been stuck in a customer service nightmare since the flight Republic was operating for American Airlines ended abruptly. She said neither the airline nor the FAA has answered her complaints while she continues to nurse the pinched nerve in her neck that the ER doctors identified. Both the airlines and the airport referred questions to the FAA. The number of close calls in recent years has created serious concerns for the FAA, NTSB and other safety experts. The NTSB's investigation of a February 2023 close call in Austin highlighted the concerns, but there have been a number of other high-profile near misses. In one case, a Southwest Airlines jet coming in for a landing in Chicago narrowly avoided smashing into a business jet crossing the runway. LaGuardia is one of just 35 airports across the country equipped with the FAA's best technology to prevent such runway incursions. The ASDS-X system uses a variety of technology to help controllers track planes and vehicles on the ground. At the other 490 US airports with a control tower, air traffic controllers have to rely on more low-tech tools like a pair of binoculars to keep track of aircraft on the ground because the systems are expensive. Expanding the systems to more airports is something Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would like to do if Congress signs off on his multi-billion-dollar plan to overhaul the nation's aging air traffic control system. But it's clear the technology is not perfect because close calls continue happening. The FAA is taking a number of additional steps to try to reduce the number of close calls, and it plans to install an additional warning system at LaGuardia in the future. But the rate of runway incursions per 1 million takeoffs and landings has remained around 30 for a decade. The rate got as high as 35 in 2017 and 2018. But generally there are fewer than 20 of the most serious kind of incursions where a collision was narrowly avoided or there was a significant potential for a crash, according to the FAA. That number did hit 22 in 2023 but fell to just 7 last year. To help, there are efforts to develop a system that will warn pilots directly about traffic on a runway instead of alerting the controller and relying on them to relay the warning. That could save precious seconds. But the FAA has not yet certified a system to warn pilots directly that Honeywell International has been developing for years. The worst accident in aviation history occurred in 1977 on the Spanish island of Tenerife, when a KLM 747 began its takeoff roll while a Pan Am 747 was still on the runway; 583 people died when the planes collided in thick fog.
