A potential disaster was averted Friday (local time) when a Phoenix air traffic controller recognised that two American Airlines jets were mistakenly flying the same flight number and acted quickly to avoid confusion and keep them a safe distance apart.<\/p>\n
Audio of the incident shortly after midnight Friday shows how he found a solution to ensure the planes that were both called American 2482 maintained proper separation as one plane arrived from Chicago shortly after the other had taken off in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been working air traffic for 25 years. I\u2019ve never seen two aircraft pretty much merge with the same call sign. That\u2019s pretty incredible,\u201d the controller said after the departing plane had safely cleared the area.<\/p>\n
If both pilots thought the controller was telling them to fly at the same altitude as they headed toward each other, they might have collided, so it was crucial they knew which plane he was directing.<\/p>\n
Quick thinking ensured the controller\u2019s instructions were clear<\/p>\n
The audio posted by ATC.com shows how the controller quickly started referring to \u201cAmerican 2482 on the arrival\u201d and \u201cAmerican 2482 on the departure\u201d to keep the two planes straight.<\/p>\n
The controller kept the arriving plane safely above the departing plane even as their flight paths converged, and ensured that the pilots of both airlines saw each other when they were still miles apart. He also directed the departing plane not to climb too high, so a gap would remain between the planes.<\/p>\n
The arriving pilot complimented the controller for his \u201cnice work\u201d once the two planes had passed each other safely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been disastrous, but I\u2019m glad it worked out,\u201d the controller replied.<\/p>\n
Expert says airline must have missed that the flights would overlap<\/p>\n
Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said it\u2019s likely that someone inside the airline\u2019s dispatch centre failed to catch that both planes would be in the air at the same time with identical flight numbers when both the dispatcher and the pilots signed off on the flight plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can drop the ball, and that shouldn\u2019t happen, but it\u2019s nice to see that the system is resilient and we have all the safeguards,\u201d said Arroyo, who has only seen this type of issue a couple of times in his four decades with United Airlines. Arroyo started his career as a dispatcher before becoming a pilot.<\/p>\n
Flight 2482 is a round-trip route that often flies back and forth between Chicago and Phoenix. Typically, the same plane goes back and forth, but the flight out of Chicago was delayed by weather, so American found a second plane in Phoenix, and that flight left on time. The result was that both planes briefly shared the same airspace before the arriving flight landed.<\/p>\n
The government and airline will determine how this occurred<\/p>\n
The Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines will investigate how this happened, and they both emphasised how glad they were that everyone remained safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe diligence and professionalism of air traffic controllers and our pilots ensured required separation was always maintained and the issue was identified and addressed. Both flights continued safely and without incident,\u201d American Airlines said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A potential disaster was averted Friday (local time) when a Phoenix air traffic controller recognised that two American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15656,138,111,139,64,69,112],"class_list":["post-569442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-air-travel","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north-america","tag-nz","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}