Aborted Airport Landing Adds to Series of Flight Incidents

An American Airlines Group Inc. plane aborted its landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to avoid another aircraft departing on the same runway, the latest in an alarming series of US aviation incidents in recent weeks.

The jet was ordered by air traffic controllers to perform a “go-around” Tuesday morning to ensure sufficient separation between the planes, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The maneuver, which can be requested by a pilot or controller, repositions the plane to make another landing approach.

Less than two hours after the incident in Washington, a Southwest Airlines Co. plane at Chicago Midway International Airport narrowly avoided a possible collision with a smaller business jet that crossed the runway.

The American flight from Boston “landed safely and normally,” the airline said in a statement Wednesday. “A go-around is not an abnormal flight maneuver and can occur nearly every day in the national airspace system.”

The back-to-back episodes add to a spate of recent incidents in North America, most notably a Jan. 29 midair collision between an American regional jet and a military helicopter near Reagan airport that killed 67 people. A Delta Air Lines Inc. jet crash-landed in Toronto this month, tearing off a wing and spinning the aircraft upside down, while there also have been several accidents involving private aircraft.

There have been ongoing concerns over shortages of air traffic controllers and the nation’s increasingly congested air space. The Trump Administration fired hundreds of FAA workers earlier this month, and the Transportation Department has said it’s enlisting the help of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to modernize the air traffic control system — a massive undertaking that officials have been trying to tackle for years.

In the Southwest incident, the private-jet crew failed to listen to air traffic control instructions to stop before reaching the Midway runway the larger jet was set to land on, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told Fox News in an interview Wednesday. The NTSB must conclude its investigation before reaching final conclusions, she said.