Personal Injury Blog

NTSB Confirms Near-Miss Plane Crash Incident at Chicago Midway Airport

January 16th, 2012
near-miss plane crash

The copilot of the Southwest Airlines plain spotted the Learjet, and shouted at the captain to stop the plane.

Air traffic controller fatigue is likely to blame for a near-miss plane crash at Chicago’s Midway Airport last month.  According to the National Transportation Safety Board, a Learjet plane that was departing the airport came very close to a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 jet that had just been cleared on the same runway.

According to the Board, the copilot of the Southwest Airlines plain spotted the Learjet, and shouted at the captain to stop the plane.  The captain then brought the plane to a halt at the edge of the runway.  Fortunately, there were no injuries in the accident.  The National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report into the incident.  No blame has been assigned in the report yet.

The incident occurred on December 1 at about 9 AM CT.  The air traffic controllers gave the Southwest Airlines plane clearance to decelerate the central runway, while the Learjet was given clearance for takeoff.  However when the Southwest Airlines was given clearance to turn right on the taxiway, it brought the plane on a potential collision course with the Learjet.

Credit for preventing a potentially major disaster should go to the Southwest Airlines copilot who was able to spot the Learjet in time, and was able to alert the pilot.  However, if the Learjet have not been able to take off when it did, and had still been on the runway, the consequences could have been devastating.

What’s even more surprising is that Midway International Airport, where this incident occurred, was equipped with a surface movement detection system.   The system helps prevent runway incursions and runway errors like this.  The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating if the system was in operation at the time.

Runway incursions and runway-related errors like this have been blamed for a number of near miss-related incidents recently.  In most of these cases, the incidents did not resulted in serious plane crashes of fatalities.  However, most of these incidents have been blamed on air traffic controller errors.  While the National Transportation Safety Board has not assigned any blame in this incident, it does seem to Los Angeles plane crash lawyers that this incident was entirely preventable.

 

Posted by Robert Reeves at 3:54 am: No comments

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