A Delta flight was traveling 60 mph down a runway in Mexico City on Monday when an AeroMéxico plane landed in front of it.
The Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 jet bound for Atlanta had to stop its takeoff and return to its terminal at Benito Juarez International Airport after an AeroMéxico Embraer 190 regional jet flew over the plane and landed in front of it on the same runway, according to multiple reports.
FlightRadar24, a flight tracking site, showed the two aircraft about 200 feet apart, according to the reports.
The Delta flight, which had 144 passengers and six crew members on board, departed to Atlanta about three hours late, CNN reported.
Delta and AeroMéxico both said in separate statements obtained by ABC News the companies were cooperating with authorities as the incident is investigated. Both airlines said maintaining passenger safety was their number one priority.
ABC reported on air traffic control recordings from the incident, in which the Delta pilot was reportedly heard saying, “We are holding on the runway.” Another voice can be heard in the recordings saying, “Wow” and “Increíble.”
The Independent has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration and Mexico’s civil aviation agency for comment.
Steve Ganyard, an ABC News aviation contributor and former fighter pilot, explained what could have gone wrong in the near collision.
“There are parallel runways at Mexico City. So we don’t know if the controller told the Aeromexico aircraft to land on the left-hand and not the right-hand runway where the Delta jet was,” he said.
The aviation expert continued: “We also don’t know, perhaps the tower controller didn’t understand that they had cleared the Aeromexico aircraft to land while simultaneously clearing the Delta jet to take off.”
