United States: Two planes forced to abort landing to avoid collisions

Two plane crashes were potentially avoided in the space of a few minutes across the Atlantic on Tuesday morning. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that two planes were forced to abort their landings to avoid collisions. The first, an American Airlines flight from Boston, was due to land at Washington National Airport. As it made its final descent, it ultimately aborted its landing maneuver to climb back into the sky and accelerate away from the airport.

According to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration, an air traffic controller asked the pilots of the plane to abort the landing to "ensure that separation was maintained between this aircraft and an aircraft departing from the same runway." About an hour and a half later, the pilots of Southwest Airlines Flight 2504 from Omaha were forced to abort their landing at Chicago Midway Airport because of "a business jet that entered the runway without authorization."

The two incidents come less than a month after a mid-air collision in the skies over the U.S. capital killed 67 people . The collision occurred between a military helicopter and an American Airlines subsidiary airliner on approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700 from Wichita, Kansas, in the central United States, was due to land seconds later. The helicopter, a UH-60 Black Hawk, was on a training flight, according to the military. The collision occurred at an altitude of about 300 feet and both aircraft crashed into the waters of the partially frozen Potomac River. None of the 60 passengers and four crew members of American Eagle Flight 5342, nor the three military personnel aboard the helicopter, survived.

According to a preliminary report from the U.S. aviation regulator, the FAA, the staffing levels at the airport's control tower were "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic." Only one air traffic controller, instead of the usual two, was handling both helicopter and airliner traffic, the report, which was leaked shortly after the fatal crash, said. Before the collision, air traffic controllers warned the helicopter that it was in the path of the plane and then asked it to "get behind" it, according to an audiotape of the tower conversations.