A recent prime example of an airplane "close call" took place when, on Aug. 11, a private Cessna Citation jet was preparing to land at San Diego International Airport and narrowly missed a collision with a Southwest Airlines (LUV) -) plane on the runway.
Reviewed audio shows that the pilot repeatedly asked if it was safe to land and was told that it was by the air traffic controller. Another air traffic controller fortunately saw the Southwest plane where the jet was supposed to land and quickly called off instructions to descend.
Don't Miss: Two planes nearly collided mid-air, injuries reported
While still quite rare compared to the number of flights that take off successfully every day, such airplane "close calls" occur much more frequently than previously thought. A new review of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents from the New York Times identified at least 46 close-call incidents with commercial airlines in July.
Image source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
These are some of the airplane close calls that occurred last month
These include an American Airlines (AAL) -) plane that had to suddenly halt accelerating at 160 miles per hour to not hit a nearby Frontier Airlines plane in San Francisco and a collision warning that blared when another American Airlines plane on the way to Dallas got too close to a United Airlines (UAL) -) one in the air."
Incident numbers from other months do not differ significantly from what was observed in July. The report points out that an industry-wide shortage of air traffic controllers is behind the slight increase from prior years — between 2012 and 2022, traffic in the air rose by 5% while the number of fully-trained air traffic controllers fell by 10%. As a result, the ones who do work in this role are often putting in longer hours to meet demand.
"The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency's internal records show," the report reads. "Mistakes by air traffic controllers — stretched thin by a nationwide staffing shortage — have been one major factor."
These are the steps the industry is taking to avoid such close calls
Given how close some of these planes came to disaster, the report caused an outcry among members of the public and people who were afraid of flying to begin with. Despite the fact that over 45,000 flights cross U.S. skies on average every day, the mental image of planes coming into the same spot on the runway or crashing mid-air caused some to call on the industry to take stronger steps toward insuring that such incidents do not happen.
"The U.S. aviation system is the safest in the world, but one close call is one too many," the FAA said of the report, adding that it was pursuing a March Safety Summit "goal of zero serious close calls."
While efforts to recruit more air traffic controllers in particular have been slow in coming due to the long training period and demanding nature of the job, the FAA reiterated its plan to continue trying to train and staff new members. According to the agency, it hired 1,500 for the 2023 fiscal year and currently has more than 2,600 in different stages of training across the U.S.
SEE THE FULL REPORT AND REENACTED ANIMATIONS OF THE INCIDENTS HERE.
