A Southwest plane passed less than 200 feet behind a business jet at Midway Airport last month as the two nearly collided, a preliminary report from federal investigators shows.
As the captain of the business plane, operated by Flexjet, approached the Southwest aircraft’s designated runway, he mistook it for a different runway, he told investigators. The crew of the plane looked both ways as they approached the intersection but didn’t see the Southwest plane.
The Southwest crew, meanwhile, saw the business plane approaching their runway but assumed it would stop, according to the report. When the first officer realized the smaller plane wasn’t stopping, he called for the captain piloting the commercial jet to pull back up in a maneuver called a “go-around.”
The findings are part of an initial report on the near-collision issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. The federal agency is continuing to investigate, but the preliminary report sheds more light on the circumstances surrounding the close call.
Video showed Southwest Flight 2504 from Omaha, Nebraska, preparing to land shortly after 8:45 a.m. Feb. 25 when it abruptly changed plans. The large jet had nearly touched down when the smaller Flexjet plane, about to head to an airport outside Knoxville, Tennessee, began to cross the runway in front of it. The Southwest plane pulled up and ascended and the smaller plane proceeded across the runway, the video showed.
The near-collision was not the first time in recent years aircraft have come so close to colliding at Midway that the FAA took note. But aviation experts have said aborted landings are not entirely unusual, and pilots train to handle such situations.
The day after the close call NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the business jet crew appeared to fail to follow instructions.
“We don’t believe that this was an air traffic control issue,” she said on “Fox & Friends.” “It appears this was a failure of the flight crew from Flexjet to listen and abide by the instructions of air traffic control.”
The preliminary report describes the actions of the Flexjet crew leading up to the moments the small plane crossed the Southwest jet’s runway.
After completing pre-flight checks and boarding a passenger, the crew called ground control and asked for taxi instructions. The directions didn’t make sense to the crew, and when they asked for clarification they were given an alternate route.
As they taxied, ground control issued instructions that the crew at first read back incorrectly. The controller repeated the instructions, and this time the crew read them back correctly.
At one point, the crew didn’t see the runway markings or signs they would have expected to indicate where they were, though the sun made visibility difficult, the crew told investigators. They mistook their location, and as the plane approached the runway where the Southwest flight was to land, the captain thought it was a different crossing.
The ground controller instructed the Flexjet plane to stop as it approached the Southwest plane’s runway, but “the transmission was not acknowledged,” according to the report.
Later, after crossing the Southwest runway, the plane was directed to head off to a section of the airport and call the control tower.
In a statement, a Flexjet spokesperson noted the investigation is continuing.
“We are still in the process of an ongoing investigation,” the company spokesperson said. “Any action to rectify and ensure the highest safety standards will be taken.”
Southwest Airlines did not comment. The Chicago Department of Aviation declined to comment beyond saying “safety remains the highest priority at Chicago’s airports,” citing the ongoing investigation.
The Southwest plane made an “uneventful” landing minutes after the near-collision, the NTSB report noted. The Flexjet plane took off about 25 minutes later.
None of the 142 people aboard the Southwest flight or the three people on the Flexjet plane were injured, and neither aircraft was damaged.
