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 www.LiveATC.net, 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.
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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.
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'To lose radio communication for several minutes would mean that something needs to be looked at and looked at in detail and resolved.' The repeated communication problems continued into the new year. In February, an FAA alert stated that 'users can expect arrival delays / airborne holding into the Newark Airport of up to 45 minutes due to frequency and communication line issues.' Another alert about delays due to 'communications issues' was issued in early April. Finally, on April 28, the Newark controllers lost radar service for about 90 seconds and were unable to communicate with pilots for about a minute, a source with knowledge of the situation told CNN. The breakdown was caused by failures in the copper wiring that transmits information from Long Island to Philadelphia, a separate source said. After the incident, at least three controllers, one supervisor and a trainee took 45 days of mental health leave. That led to even more significant understaffing at the Newark approach control site, requiring airlines to delay or cancel hundreds of flights over the last week – and turning a situation that had been causing consternation in the insular air traffic controller community into a national headache. The FAA said in a statement Wednesday that it plans to add three new 'high-bandwidth telecommunications connections' from New York to Philadelphia, replace copper lines with fiber-optic technology, and deploy a backup system to provide more speed and reliability. In the longer term, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has promised a complete reconstruction of the nation's air traffic control system that he says will be more reliable than the current antiquated technology. But Johnson, the aviation expert, said that the FAA should re-evaluate the decision to move controllers to Philadelphia in the first place. 'This current configuration appears to be increasing complexity without a sufficient safety margin,' he said. 'Relying on human heroics to patch over structural vulnerabilities is not how we maintain safety.' The Newark approach controller who was on duty during the November incident told CNN he works in constant fear of a fatal crash under his watch. He said the FAA ignored warnings about the safety issues, and he argued that the failures could have been avoided if the agency had listened to controllers who had objected to the move. 'At the end of the day, I just want equipment that works,' he said. 'I don't want to kill people. That's my biggest fear.' — CNN
