American Airlines Flight Narrowly Avoids Mid-Air Collision Outside JFK

An American Airlines flight was potentially moments away from colliding with another aircraft after both planes began their descent at the same time.

YouTube channel You Can See ATC, which tracks and reconstructs “non-standard and emergency situations,” found that American Airlines flight AAL28 and Tradewind Aviation flight GPD235 were both directed to land at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on November 10 at the same time.

The American Airlines Airbus A321, concluding its journey from Los Angeles International Airport, was cleared to approach runway 22 left, while the Tradewind Aviation Pilatus PC-12 was cleared to approach runway 22 right, the channel reported.

However, the channel said that “for some reason” the Tradewind flight “joined the 22 left localizer.” The American flight reported the other plane taking a similar path, but the air traffic controller assured the American pilot that the plane “is landing on the parallel.”

That didn’t seem to be the case. The American Airlines pilot responded with “he is right above us,” before telling the controller that “we’re breaking up, he’s right above us.” A flight reconstruction map shows the Tradewind flight pulling out of the path after being instructed to discontinue its approach, heading southeast, while the AA flight continued its descent into JFK.

After landing, the AA pilot requested a “phone number for someone in the tower” regarding the approach to the airport. “Whoever gave Pilatus clearance to land. We need to talk to whoever that was,” the pilot can be heard saying. “It got way too tight. If we hadn’t bailed out, we would have collided.”

It’s unknown at this time how close the American and Tradewind flights were to each other, but pilots are required to maintain a distance of several miles between each other when in the air at all times.

A recent New York Times investigation found passenger planes, like the American flight, have been involved in near accidents “far more frequently than the public knows.” The report found several near misses happened in 2023. One air traffic controller told the outlet that it is “only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens.”

On July 2, a Southwest Airlines pilot aborted a landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport after the aircraft came seconds away from a potentially catastrophic collision with Delta Air Lines 737, which was preparing to take off on the same runway.

Nine days later in San Francisco, an American Airlines jet traveling at over 160 miles per hour narrowly avoided colliding with a Frontier Airlines plane. A similar close call with a Frontier aircraft occurred shortly afterward with a German airliner taking off. In both instances, the proximity to the Frontier aircraft was so close that the Federal Aviation Administration, as per internal records reviewed by The New York Times, said the encounters were “skin to skin.”

Just over two weeks later, during an American Airlines flight to Dallas, a collision warning sounded in the cockpit, forcing the pilot to ascend by 700 feet to avoid disaster after an air traffic controller had mistakenly directed a United Airlines plane to fly dangerously close.

There have been no fatal crashes involving major U.S. airlines since February 2009, when a Continental flight crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board. This is the longest ever streak without a commercial accident. However, concerns have been raised over 2023 regarding the number of averted accidents reported within the industry.

“We’re trying to take a bigger look and do some deeper analysis to see what’s going on,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told USA Today in March this year. “It’s enough that I’m concerned.”

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has said the concerning numbers of near misses is down to understaffing at air traffic control centers.

“Staffing shortages throughout the NAS have placed a tremendous amount of strain on air traffic controllers,” NATCA President Rich Santa said in a statement. “We saw the effect that air traffic controller staffing shortages had on air travel this summer, and although there has been an increased focus on training, the hiring process to overcome the staffing shortage takes years.”

“The FAA maintains extremely conservative standards for keeping aircraft safely separated,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Matthew Lehner told the New York Times. “Safety experts follow up on all events — even those in which no collision was imminent or even possible — and evaluate them for safety risks.”

Newsweek has contacted the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and American Airlines for comment via email.