An American Airlines plane has discontinued its landing to avoid getting too close to another aircraft departing from the same runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
American Flight 2246 from Boston was arriving at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it performed a go-around at an air traffic controller’s instruction on Wednesday.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The maneuver occurred about 8:20am on Tuesday, less than two hours before another plane attempting to land at Chicago’s Midway Airport was forced to climb back into the sky to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway.
Southwest said Flight 2504 from Omaha, Nebraska, safely landed “after the crew performed a precautionary go-around to avoid a possible conflict with another aircraft that entered the runway,” an airline spokesperson said in an email.
“The crew followed safety procedures and the flight landed without incident.”
Airport webcam video posted to X shows the Southwest plane approaching a runway before its nose abruptly pulls up. A smaller jet is seen crossing the runway that the passenger plane was set to use.
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board say they are investigating.
The past few weeks have seen four major aviation disasters in North America.
They include the February 6 crash of a commuter plane in Alaska that killed all 10 people on board and the January 26 midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight at National Airport that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft.
A medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed January 31 into a Philadelphia neighborhood. That crash killed seven people, including all those aboard, and injured 19 others.
Twenty-one people were injured on February 17 when a Delta flight flipped and landed on its roof at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.
