A United Airlines flight from San Francisco came close to a military helicopter while landing in Orange County on Tuesday night, prompting a federal investigation.
Patrick T. Fallon/TNS
A United Airlines flight from San Francisco came close to a military helicopter while landing in Orange County on Tuesday night, prompting a federal investigation.
United Flight 589 was approaching John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana around 8:40 p.m. when a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter crossed in front of the plane, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said it is investigating the incident, including whether a recently implemented safety measure limiting the use of “visual separation” between aircraft was in effect at the time.
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United said its pilots were aware of the helicopter and responded to a cockpit warning system designed to prevent midair collisions. No injuries were reported.
“They saw the helicopter, and also received a traffic alert, which they responded to by leveling the aircraft,” the airline said in a statement. “The United flight then landed safely.”
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Preliminary radar data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft were separated by about 525 feet vertically and roughly 1,400 feet horizontally, less than a third of a mile, when the helicopter crossed in front of the jet.
The Boeing 737 was carrying 168 people, according to United.
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The California National Guard said the helicopter was on a “routine training mission” and had been returning to Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos.
At the time, the aircraft was flying “along an established Visual Flight Rules route at an assigned altitude while in communication with air traffic control,” the guard said in a statement, adding that it also landed safely.
“A thorough review will be conducted in coordination with the appropriate agencies,” the statement said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it is aware of the incident but has no additional details.
The FAA’s investigation comes amid heightened scrutiny of aircraft separation near busy airports, following a series of recent accidents.
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On Sunday, a regional Air Canada jet struck a Port Authority fire truck after landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of people.
And last year, a midair collision involving an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet near Ronald Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., left 67 people dead. Federal investigators later found the crash stemmed from multiple breakdowns within the FAA and was “100% preventable.”
In the aftermath of that crash, the FAA moved to tighten how aircraft are kept apart in congested airspace.
The agency began rolling out new restrictions last week on the use of visual separation — in which pilots or controllers rely on sight to maintain distance — in areas where helicopter routes intersect with busy arrival and departure paths.
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Under the updated approach, controllers are required to rely more heavily on radar to ensure aircraft maintain minimum vertical and horizontal spacing.