https://viewfromthewing.com/what-we-know-now-about-friday-nights-near-disaster-at-jfk-airport/ [p] View from the Wing * About + Thank You! How to Support this Blog * Advice + Advice: Frequent Flyer + Advice: General Travel + Advice: Airlines and Airfare + Advice: Hotels + Advice: Credit Cards * Recommended Credit Card Offers * Top 10 Deals * Trip Reports + Trip Reports - Air + Trip Reports - Hotels + Trip Reports - Lounges + Trip Reports - Food + Trip Reports - Other * Advertiser Disclosure What We Know Now About Friday Night's Near-Disaster At JFK Airport by Gary Leff on January 15, 2023 On Friday night, American Airlines flight 106 from New York JFK to London Heathrow had a near-collision with a Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 headed to Santo Domingo. The incident was first reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC. The American plane, a 22 year old Boeing 777-200 (registration N754AN) crossed in front of the Delta jet that was in its takeoff roll. Air traffic control saw this happening and at almost the last possible moment called out to Delta to abort takeoff, out of fear the two planes would collide ("Shit! Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance! "). * The Delta flight stopped less than 1000 feet from where it would have intersected with American's plane. * Runway 4L was being used for takeoffs. The American Airlines aircraft did not follow air traffic control instructions. ATC audio shows they were told to ""cross runway 31 Left at Kilo" and instead crossed runway 4 Left at Juliet, in front of the accelerating Delta Boeing 737. More of the audio is now available via @liveatc. @FAANews @JFKairport to American 106: "Cross Runway 31L at Kilo." No other audio is heard before Delta 1943 was cleared for departure and American 106 crossed Runway 4L. https://t.co/ mCg2KWLIpl pic.twitter.com/CRFlEYZ1EH -- Ross Feinstein (@RossFeinstein) January 15, 2023 The American Airlines pilots clearly got their instructions wrong. Disaster was narrowly avoided. We don't know at this point that the accelerating Delta jet would have hit the American plane, but it might have, this was a huge mistake with potentially tragic consequences. The FAA is investigating and we'll eventually hear much more detail. American Airlines 106 wound up departing for London from runway 31L after a call to report the incident to JFK Tower. The Delta flight to Santo Domingo was delayed until the next morning. In a rejected takeoff like this one, where heavy use of brakes is applied, they may have wanted to have the plane inspected by maintenance. Crew may have timed out. Or the pilots may have just called it a night, quite reasonably deciding that after a near-miss it was best not to continue. That would have been more than reasonable judgment. As I previously shared, you can watch the two aircraft in this illustration. At 14 seconds in you see the Delta plane in its takeoff roll, aborting at the last minute as the American Airlines Boeing 777-200 crossed right in front of it. pic.twitter.com/DA1EyaWu0B -- Casey Wade (@CaseWade) January 14, 2023 Ultimately, based on what we know at this point, strong kudos are due both to the air traffic controller who called off the Delta 737 and to the pilots of that plane who managed to abort their takeoff and stop the aircraft before it crossed runway 31L where the Boeing widebody passed in front of it. More From View from the Wing 24 Comments << Previous Article Next Article >> [5cc43e60] About Gary Leff Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary >> More articles by Gary Leff >> Comments 1. [41e6e] Mak says: January 15, 2023 at 8:18 am Really incredible to be confronted with the stark reality that despite all of the safety procedures, the system is still so ripe for a human error. I wonder if the ATC wasn't run by an unaccountable government bureaucracy, whether they wouldn't have moved on to a more automated and failsafe system by now. 2. [0ade0] Anonymous says: January 15, 2023 at 8:19 am I work in a different industry, but one that is comparable in terms of safety. When we have much more minor safety violations occur, with much less severe potential consequences than this, the employees involved are always immediately removed from service pending the investigation and D&A results. I'm not passing judgement on these pilots, yet anyway, but given what happened, in my industry, they would be out of service until we KNEW exactly what happened. Of course, if they were to be exonerated (which does happen) they would be made whole. Can SOMEONE explain to me how these pilots were allowed to continue their flight? 3. [eaa2e] Fr8dawg says: January 15, 2023 at 8:23 am @Mak This "failsafe" system you speak of doesn't (and won't) exist. Mistake was made, disaster was averted, and they'll all learn from it when the dust settles. 4. [557bc] Sam says: January 15, 2023 at 8:26 am And Mak steps up to politicize a human error. Nice job, and a bonus for just using 2 sentences. 5. [f9eb1] Ken A says: January 15, 2023 at 8:30 am Bless you, ATC people for saving Delta Airlines from crashing into an American Airlines aircraft. 6. [ceda2] drrichard says: January 15, 2023 at 8:52 am "...unaccountable government bureaucracy..." and you know this how? After several hundred hours of piloting time I do agree that the FAA has serious administrative issues. But ATC runs very well as a functional organization within it, staffed by highly dedicated men and women who know what they are doing. And they are assuredly responsible for their actions. Lots of luck replacing them with computers. Who would you blame then? The programmers? 7. [ca6e5] Lee says: January 15, 2023 at 9:03 am The intersection is only about 4,000 feet into 4L's takeoff roll. The 737 requires a bit over 6,300 feet to achieve Vr and perhaps another 1,500 to 2,000 feet to hit 35 feet in altitude. (Short field procedures aren't in play at JFK.) If the 777 was still at the intersection, there's no question that there would have been a collision. Kudos to the ATC . . . whose name will probably never be known. 8. [ab441] Mark Athas says: January 15, 2023 at 9:33 am Retired ATC here. Great job by JFK controller. Had two documented saves in my career. Anyone who wants a for profit or an NGO entity controlling our airports and airspace (and yes I'm aware there are contract towers in the NAS that are under federal guidelines) is either uninformed or just an ideologue with an ax to grind. 9. [b6591] Tim Kelly says: January 15, 2023 at 10:27 am Can anyone tell me how close Delta was to V-ONE? 10. [c3c13] Luke says: January 15, 2023 at 10:32 am I just love all the alt-right wackjobs coming out on this post and the previous one, claiming this all could have been avoided if the FAA wasn't run by "big gubmint." Sure, privatize the FAA, make them a for-profit company, and watch them invest in safety the same way Southwest invests in automation. 11. [5cc43] Gary Leff says: January 15, 2023 at 10:34 am There are serious issues that can be discussed about technical investments which can augment human judgment, in the cockpit and the tower, but air traffic control seemed to perform well here and also worth noting that most proposals to separate the ATO from FAA (and thus have work performed and regulated by separate entities) involving spinning it out into a non-profit like NavCanada rather than a for-profit entity. 12. [b0dbf] Andy (the other one) says: January 15, 2023 at 10:39 am @Mak You lost the argument by putting "automated" and "failsafe" in the same sentence. This is a pipe dream. These systems designed by humans, deployed by humans and operated by humans. They simply shift or attempt to shift blame to other humans - think Tesla Autopilot. They might have a better track record in the long run, but in very limited areas and using very creative KPIs. 13. [c3c13] Luke says: January 15, 2023 at 10:41 am @Tim Kelly - I've heard apparently DAL1943 was at 115+ kts when they slammed on the brakes, which would be pretty close to V1. Although I think that figure might've just come from JonNYC's Twitter thread, and one counter datapoint would be that the Delta pilots tell ATC they're immediately ready to clear the active, and don't request to hold on the runway or taxiway immediately outside, in order to let brakes cool down. 14. [c3c13] Luke says: January 15, 2023 at 10:53 am @Gary - I'd be happy to have a serious conversation about the merits of a public-private partnership to replace the FAA. Air Traffic Control in the UK is run the same way, regulated under the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) but run by a private entity, albeit a nonprofit / NGO. But these are not serious people looking to have a serious conversation. Interestingly, the UK's rail infrastructure is ALSO run under this model. All the rails in the UK are owned and maintained by NetworkRail. Passenger and freight services pay them fees to use the trackage, and in return if a service ever doesn't run to time because of rail maintenance / infrastructure degradation issues then they owe compensation back to the service operators. Can you imagine the uproar if we ever moved to adopt a similar model of nationalizing all the privately-owned rail networks in the country, and then turning them over to an NGO to maintain? Incidentally, we need only look at our rail infrastructure to understand how bad truly privately-owned and maintained infrastructure can get. 15. [5cc43] Gary Leff says: January 15, 2023 at 11:05 am "Can you imagine the uproar if we ever moved to adopt a similar model of nationalizing all the privately-owned rail networks in the country" Well, Amtrak... 16. [c3c13] Luke says: January 15, 2023 at 11:19 am And Amtrak works great (relatively speaking) in the Northeast Corridor, which is the only part of the country where they own the trackage! Well enough to put the AA shuttle out of business, at any rate. As an NYC resident, I can't tell people from other parts of the country enough how pleasant it is to take an Acela from Penn Station - recently renovated with Moynihan Train Hall actually feeling like a European-style big-city hub station or terminal (which strictly speaking, Penn is not, it's a through-station) - to Union Station in DC. 17. [5cc43] Gary Leff says: January 15, 2023 at 11:42 am @Luke - Amtrak is terribly run, track aside, and operated to please political interests to further access to subsidies rather than operated to deliver quality service for customers where it's actually useful and in demand 18. [41e6e] Mak says: January 15, 2023 at 11:43 am @Fr8dawg Failsafe might be slightly too strong a word, but Americans merely need to look at the privatized ATAC in that freewheeling capitalist country Canada to see how it could be improved, where automated controllers "CAATS," "ADS-B," and space based surveillance that have made the skies safer for everybody and where innovation has made possible routes over the North Pole which has cut millions of collective hours off of flying time between North America and Asia which never, ever, would have been possible had the self-serving revolving-door bureaucrats at the FAA been responsible for it. American provincialism prevents people in the USA from understanding how backwards its transportation system - from it's still mostly Soviet style air infrastructure, to ports, to roads, to rail - is. 19. [41e6e] Mak says: January 15, 2023 at 12:01 pm @Sam "And Mak steps up to politicize a human error. Nice job, and a bonus for just using 2 sentences." Shame on me for trying to improve Air Traffic Control. I'm so embarrassed. Much better to allow bureaucrats with lifetime sinecures and revolving doors to lucrative gigs at Raytheon, Boeing, GE, etc. to feather their beds at the expense of public safety and innovation. At least I'm not as bad as the angry families of ET302 and JT610 politicizing the deaths of their loved ones by calling for accountability in the FAA and their cozy relationship with Boeing! Thanks to your admonition, I'll never stoop so low! Thank you most gratefully! 20. [11fab] Joelle says: January 15, 2023 at 12:15 pm Pilot here... many things went wrong here and this will warrant a full investigation. For those asking, there are multiple layers of preventative measures that failed, including some that do not rely upon humans. A Runway Status Light (RWSL) system is installed at JFK, which automatically displays red lights across the runway entrance when the system detects that the runway is occupied. According to a slide from the FAA website, these lights were installed on taxiway Juliet at 4R/22L. No takeoff hold lights were installed on runway 4L, meaning that the Delta 737 would have not been able to detect the American 777 except by using the naked eye (but I can't determine whether the American 777 was present on the runway at the time that the Delta initiated its takeoff roll). However, despite all the fancy systems, Runway Guard Lights, and lighted airport hold short signs and pavement markings it was the pilot's decision to enter the runway. And that decision is always subject to human error. 21. [5361a] Tim Dunn says: January 15, 2023 at 12:37 pm There isn't a country in the world that has privatized ATC services that are operated for less cost or greater safety. Again, the problem here was that what should have been an experienced AA crew made a mistake that was counter to what ATC told them. The US aviation system is built on experienced personnel at every level. Humans do make mistakes but having enough other professionals - ATC and the DL pilots in this case - helps overcome the mistakes of others. Trying to turn this into a government discussion distracts from the real issue. The 737 might be an old aircraft type - the aircraft in question was relatively young - but Boeing still builds good brakes. And I expect that Delta will be asking American to pay for the expenses incurred because of the cancellation of the DL flight. 22. [41e6e] Mak says: January 15, 2023 at 2:23 pm @Tim Dunn "There isn't a country in the world that has privatized ATC services that are operated for less cost or greater safety." . . . except for Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom . . . . I would say that there isn't a country in the world that has privatized ATC what has not experienced lower cost, greater safety, and higher innovation that saves passengers time and saves airlines fuel, but feel free to name one if you disagree. 23. [ab441] Mark Athas says: January 15, 2023 at 3:15 pm Navcanada ATC works a fraction of the tin US ATC pushes Apples and oranges I worked with Patco rehires who managed to latch on N of our border after the 1981 strike Crackpot rhetoric aside the U.S. government is not going to relinquish control of US airspace not now not ever 24. [557bc] Sam says: January 15, 2023 at 3:29 pm << @Sam "And Mak steps up to politicize a human error. Nice job, and a bonus for just using 2 sentences." Shame on me for trying to improve Air Traffic Control. >> If only you had. Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. 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Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary >> View from the Wing is a project of Miles and Points Consulting, LLC. This site is for entertainment purpose only. The owner of this site is not an investment advisor, financial planner, nor legal or tax professional and articles here are of an opinion and general nature and should not be relied upon for individual circumstances. Advertiser Disclosure: Many (but not all) of the credit card offers on the site are from banks from which we receive compensation if you are approved. Compensation does not impact the placement of cards in content. 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