Planes involved in Austin near-miss came within 100 feet of each other

A Southwest Airlines and FedEx cargo airplane avoided crashing into each other at the Austin airport over the weekend by less than 100 feet, the head of a federal investigating body said Monday.

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said in an interview with POLITICO that the near-miss findings are still preliminary, but that it's "fairly clear that the aircraft came within very close proximity of each other and we believe it's less than 100 feet."

On Saturday, air traffic control cleared a FedEx cargo airplane to land at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on the same runway where a Southwest Airlines flight with 128 people on board was about to take off. The FedEx plane aborted its landing.

“We're really digging into the communications between [air traffic control], Southwest, FedEx — especially in relation to weather issues,” she said, referring to a host of causes that could have contributed to the near miss. It was an extraordinarily close call, especially considering that aircraft often maintain thousands of feet, and often miles of space, at minimum away from one another.

Both the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB, an independent agency that investigates transportation accidents, are probing the event, which happened over the span of roughly two minutes.

It's not the only near-miss in recent months. In January, an American Airlines flight crossed ahead of a Delta Air Lines flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport, an incident that the NTSB continues to investigate.

In that case, both aircraft were within about 1,400 feet of each other, Homendy said, but JFK’s air traffic controllers were able to take action based on a technology the airport has equipped that tracks ground-level movement of aircraft and vehicles on the grounds of an airport. Homendy said roughly 35 airports around the country have the technology equipped; Austin does not.

“Air traffic controllers in Austin could see the FedEx plane coming in, but couldn't actually see where the Southwest plane was in relation to the FedEx plane because the Southwest plane was on the ground,” Homendy explained. “Had they had that technology … they would have been able to see both the FedEx flight and the Southwest flight.”

Homendy said she expects both near-miss incidents to come up at a hearing on aviation safety slated for Tuesday before the House Transportation Committee, where she will also testify.