Officials say that an air traffic controller may have double-booked a runway at a Texas airport on Saturday. This put two jetliners on a path that could have led to a collision, which was avoided.
The close call happened at 6:40 a.m. at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 was given permission to take off just before a FedEx 767 cargo plane was due to land, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said that the FedEx plane gave up on its plan to land on Runway 18-Left.
“The FedEx plane’s pilot stopped the landing and started to climb back up,” it said. “The Southwest flight took off without a hitch.”
The package shipper said in a statement that the FedEx Express flight from Memphis to Austin “landed safely after an event just before landing.”
Southwest didn’t want to say anything. When asked for a comment, the air traffic controllers’ union didn’t answer right away.
The FAA said at the time that on January 16 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, controllers quickly told a Delta Air Lines plane that was about to take off to stop when they saw an American Airlines plane crossing its path.
The Delta 737 was able to stop in time after a controller said, “Delta 1943, cancel takeoff clearance!” on the radio, which was saved by the website LiveATC.
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were looking into what happened on Saturday.
This story was first posted on NBCNews.com.
