The harrowing near-miss between a Southwest Airlines plane and a private jet at a Chicago airport was a failure of the private jet crew to listen to air traffic control instructions, according to National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy.
Homendy made the statement during a Wednesday morning appearance on “Fox & Friends,” saying the Flexjet crew had been instructed to “line up and wait and hold short of runway 31C, which Southwest was landing on, and they failed to do so.”
Homendy noted, however, that the NTSB still has to conduct its investigation before coming to any final conclusions or taking any punitive action against the Flexjet crew.
“There’s a lot of information we still have to collect. We want to know what was going on in the cockpit of that airplane,” Homendy said. “We will collect air traffic control communications. We have asked for the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from Flexjet.”
DELTA FLIGHT FORCED TO RETURN TO ATLANTA AIRPORT AFTER ‘HAZE’ FILLS CABIN
President Donald Trump weighed in on the near crash on social media Wednesday, suggesting the Flexjet pilots may have been “sleeping.”
“GREAT JOB BY THE SOUTHWEST PILOTS IN CHICAGO. A NEARLY TRAGIC CLOSE CALL. PERHAPS SUSPEND THE PILOTS LICENSE OF THE OTHER PLANE, WHO MUST HAVE BEEN “SLEEPING!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Tuesday’s near-miss occurred when the Flexjet crossed the runway where a Southwest plane was coming in for landing. The Southwest craft had already touched down, but pilots observed the Flexjet and quickly took off once again to avoid a collision.
Duffy says the Flexjet crew may have their licenses revoked on Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a preliminary statement that the “business jet entered the runway without authorization.” The agency, as well as the NTSB, said they are investigating the incident.
“We are aware of the occurrence today in Chicago,” a Flexjet spokesperson said in a statement. “Flexjet adheres to the highest safety standards and we are conducting a thorough investigation. Any action to rectify and ensure the highest safety standards will be taken.”
Homendy emphasized that Americans should remain confident that air travel is still the safest means of transportation.
The incident in Chicago comes after a series of aviation disasters across the country, several of them fatal.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ramped up scrutiny on America’s air travel systems after a helicopter collided with a commercial airliner over Washington, D.C., killing more than 60 people.
Less than 48 hours later, a medical ambulance flight crashed in Philadelphia, leaving seven people dead.
Last week, two small planes collided midair at a regional airport in Arizona, killing two people.
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