A plane nearly collided with a helicopter at a Southern California airport on Saturday, just days after the Federal Aviation Administration held a summit over rising safety concerns.
FAA officials said a Southwest flight was approaching a runway at Hollywood Burbank Airport around 9:50 a.m. Saturday when an air traffic controller spotted a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter on the same runway.
According to a statement from the FAA, the helicopter was practicing touch-and-go landings. After noticing the problem, the controller told the plane to turn around.
No one was injured and the matter is currently being investigated by the FAA.
A similar situation occurred at Burbank Airport in February after a Mesa Airlines flight was told to abort landing because a SkyWest aircraft was cleared to take off on the same runway. That was the fourth incident of its kind in 2023.
A plane nearly collided with a helicopter at a Southern California airport on Saturday, just days after the Federal Aviation Administration held a summit over rising safety concerns
FAA officials said a Southwest flight approached a runway at Hollywood Burbank Airport around 9:50 a.m. Saturday
When the plane was about a mile away, an air traffic controller spotted a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter on the same runway
According to NBC 4 Los Angeles, the Southwest flight, a Boeing 737, was only a mile from the runway.
The air traffic controller noticing the serious safety issue told the helicopter to stay on the runway and the Southwest pilot to “go around” and not land.
During the similar incident last month at the same Southern California airport, an automatic alarm went off on the Mesa Airlines plane as the planes worked to avoid a near miss.
The February scare was reportedly one of the main contributing factors that led the FAA to call an impromptu safety summit to address the growing concern.
Just weeks before the Burbank near miss, two Alaska Airlines planes scraped their tails on the tarmac at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on takeoff.
That near miss was attributed to a software bug that led the pilots to believe their planes were 20,000 pounds lighter.
The problem was deemed serious enough for Alaska Airlines to initiate a nationwide shutdown of all aircraft in the immediate aftermath, according to the Seattle Times.
At the time, an Alaska Airlines spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com that the incident occurred and that the grounding lasted about 20 minutes.
“The tail touches were caused by a vendor software update that accidentally installed code, resulting in inaccurate takeoff performance weight data for a small subset of our flights,” they said.
Just weeks earlier, a separate flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport almost saw a similar wreckage, when a Delta plane almost nose-forward ran into the side of an American Airlines jet as it pulled onto the runway.
The Boeing 737 was already traveling at 185 km/h when an air traffic controller noticed the imminent disaster.
The pilot of the Southwest Airlines flight was told to “fly around” to avoid a collision
The air traffic controller at Hollywood Burbank Airport told the helicopter to stop
During the similar incident last month at the same airport in Southern California, an automatic alarm went off on the Mesa Airlines plane as the planes worked to avoid a near miss
Mesa Airlines CRJ900 came within minutes of colliding with another plane in February
Air traffic control allowed a SkyWest aircraft to take off unimpeded after the near miss
The February near-disaster happened at Hollywood Burbank Airport, pictured
Another incident in the nick of time took place on March 7 between a Republic Airways flight and a United Airlines plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The Republic flight had overran a runway and was on track to collide with the United aircraft cleared for takeoff.
That incident is also currently under investigation by the FAA.
In an interview with NBC Night News anchor Lester Holt, FAA administrator Billy Nolen said officials have begun “to see things we don’t expect to see.”
“We expect every flight to go smoothly,” said Nolen.
“And so we’ve had these events over the last few weeks. That gives us a moment to say, ‘Let’s stop. Let’s think. Let’s ask ourselves, are we missing something?'” he said.
Nolen said more people are flying and more planes are in the air because of a “pent-up demand for flying.”
“Flying has come back with a vengeance, so to speak,” Nolen said.
Speak with NBC 4 Los Angelesretired commercial pilot and aviation expert Ross “Rusty” Aimer echoed Nolen’s statements.
‘Airlines are expanding the number of flights as much as possible. Everybody’s in the air,” Aimer said.
Despite the series of close calls, Aimer says people generally don’t need to worry.
“But the system is secure,” Aimer said. “The system works.”
The pilot behind the Miracle on the Hudson, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who now works as an aviation safety expert, said the close calls at US airports are “the canaries in the coal mine.”
“We’ve lost a lot of our flies and the recovery from COVID has been faster than many expected — so we’ve fallen short in a lot of important ways and in terms of staffing,” Sullenberger told the Today Show.
Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who now works as an aviation safety expert, said the close calls at US airports are “the canaries in the coal mine”
JFK, JANUARY 13: There was panic at JFK in New York when a Delta jet had to abort its takeoff after a near miss with an American Airlines plane. An air traffic controller was heard saying ‘S**t!’ seeing that the American aircraft had crossed from an adjacent taxiway, he ordered the other aircraft, “Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance!”
In January, a flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport almost saw a similar wreckage, when a Delta plane almost nose-first crashed into the side of an American Airlines plane as it pulled onto the runway.
The Boeing 737 was already traveling at 185 km/h when an air traffic controller noticed the imminent disaster.
The Delta pilot had to brake abruptly and traveled another 200 feet before coming to a complete stop with only 300 feet left before the plane would have collided with American Airlines’ Boeing 777.
Despite the massive planes nearly colliding with each other, the Delta pilot could later be heard on cockpit audio recordings casually saying that he just needed to make a few phone calls about the near-fatal crash.
The close calls join a growing list of fiascos for the nation’s aviation industry, prompting an impending federal overhaul of the nation’s aerospace system.
According to the FAA, the number of runway incursions last year was 1,633.
A runway incursion is any time an aircraft, vehicle or person is inappropriately in a protected area while an aircraft is taking off or landing.
The frightening number of close calls has risen from 1,397 in 2012, while there were only 987 reported incidents in 2002.
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