An American Airlines flight bound for Boston was forced to abort takeoff at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday morning to avoid possibly hitting another plane.
An American Airlines flight bound for Boston was forced to abort takeoff at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday morning to avoid another plane that was landing.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it’s investigating what happened. It’s the second such incidentat the Washington, DC, airport in the last six weeks.
“An air traffic controller cancelled the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134 because another aircraft was cleared to land on an intersecting runway,” the FAA said in a statement about Wednesday’s scare.
While it's bad that it got this close, it's good that someone stopped that plane. I'm not saying this is evidence that the system is flawless, but this is better than at least one alternative
Yeah, it really looks like a case of "the first layer of administrative safety control failed, and another layer kicked in to prevent a dangerous scenario."
Yea but it’s not like we don’t have the technology and skill to be able to keep the plane from moving at all. This story should be “airports so busy that there are constant conflicts with schedules” not “these planes nearly obliterated each other.”
It’s a good thing that we have fail-safes but this was too close. Aviation standards need to be airtight.
The same thing that's been happening for a while, just delayed for a bit from covid. Airports are at peak capacity in a lot of places and building more isn't happening fast enough. Air traffic controllers are overworked and understaffed, this makes mistakes more common. Especially when trying to have 20% more planes pass through an airport than it was really designed for.
And like so many things in modern life, you can lay at least part of the blame on Reagan. He broke the air traffic controllers' union in order to force them to accept longer hours, lower pay, and brutal shift schedules -- look up "The Rattler" sometime, and then realize that the person directing traffic at airport that thousands of people are arriving and departing from every hour probably hasn't slept for more than a couple hours in the last three days.
News is reporting more now because boeing has been in the news.
Trains didn't start spontaneously derailing after east palestine, it's just the news started reporting on stories they would have previosly ignored. Same is happening with aviation.
The Summer of the Shark refers to the coverage of shark attacks by American news media in the summer of 2001. The sensationalist coverage of shark attacks began in early July following the Fourth of July weekend shark attack on 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast, and continued almost unabated—despite no evidence for an actual increase in attacks—until the September 11 terrorist attacks shifted the media's attention away from beaches. The Summer of the Shark has since been remembered as an example of tabloid television perpetuating a story with no real merit beyond its ability to draw ratings.