An arriving plane and a departing one tried to use the same runway, spurring an investigation, FAA says

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An arriving plane and a departing one tried to use the same runway, spurring an investigation, FAA says | CNN
cnn.com

The Federal Aviation Administration says it is investigating an incident in which a commercial flight aborted a landing as another plane apparently was taking off from the runway the first plane intended to use this week in upstate New York.

Preliminary data from FlightRadar24 shows that the PSA flight, which was coming from Washington, and Endeavor Air 5421, which was heading to New York, were as close as 625 feet from each other vertically as their courses began to converge.

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Not to worry, everyone! Project 2025 aims to put the FAA under direct control of the president via a politically appointed crony who totally won't take bribes to look the other way.

Also, the Air Traffic controllers, along with anyone not on board with this amazing vision, will be fired and replaced by that annoying guy from accounting who microwaves fish every Friday and smells really bad.

Runway incursions have become more and more common. We don’t have enough ATC, and the ones we have are overworked, stressed, and tired.

If things keep up this way it is a matter of time before a major incident happens on a runway. Fortunately we aren’t generally operating many jumbos near one another, so it’s unlikely to be as tragic as the Tenerife Airport disaster, the worst aviation incident in history, which involved two 747s colliding on a runway. But it will still involve significant loss of life.

Aren’t the control towers down to minimal staff that’re all overworked too?

I’m using ATC as a blanket term. I’m not 100% sure if that’s accurate, but I would think ATC includes like, tower controllers and approach controllers and ground controllers and en route controllers and whatnot.

Sure, they were 625 feet vertically from each other, but they were also separated by 36 years. The PSA flight was from 1988.

The video shows the two airplanes appearing to pass close to each other in the sky…

What do you mean when you say 36 years?

PSA was the initialism for Pacific Southwest Airlines. It was based on California and operated from 1949 to 1988. The planes had an iconic smile drawn on their noses.

This PSA is a kind of rebirth of the name, which is owned by American Airlines. But this PSA is based in Ohio, decidedly not Pacific nor Southwest.

And now the joke is ruined.

If no one gets the joke in the first place then there was nothing to ruin

Let's give more people older than about 45 a chance to read it first.

Edit: The (older) people have spoken!

Someone in ATC might be in trouble on this one, if it’s controlled air space.

Commercial flights don't typically use uncontrolled airports. That said, it could also be on the pilots, hence the investigation.

If the journos did their jobs, they could have probably checked out LiveATC for the comms.