Preventing this sort of thing tops the Most Wanted List at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). On Friday (January 11), two airplanes came within 1,500 feet of colliding on Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International’s (ATL) busy Runway 27-Right.
That’s about three seconds.
Here’s what happened according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). At approximately 10:30am Atlantic Southeast Flight 876, flying under Delta Connection colors and headed for Greensboro (GSO), was told by the tower to hold short of the runway. NATCA says the pilot correctly read this instruction back to controllers, but then proceeded to cross 27-Right anyway.
That put the RJ in the path of a Delta 757, barreling down the runway and bound for Mexico. The 757 was too far into its takeoff roll to stop before arriving at the intersection which the RJ had just crossed.
What could have been catastrophic turned out to be just a footnote, but, as far as safety insiders are concerned, those footnotes continue to crop up at a decidedly disconcerting pace.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there were 38,588 fatal vehicle accidents in the United States in 2006, the last year for which full statistics are available. Buy contrast, there was one fatal commercial plane crash in the U.S. during 2006.
In 2007, there were none.
No cliché, just fact: flying continues the safest path from Point A to Point B.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
