An American Airlines flight bound for Boston was forced to abort takeoff at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday morning to avoid another plane that was landing.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it’s investigating what happened. It’s the second such incident at the Washington, DC, airport in the last six weeks.

“An air traffic controller cancelled the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134 because another aircraft was cleared to land on an intersecting runway,” the FAA said in a statement about Wednesday’s scare.

  • iAmTheTot
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    347 months ago

    While it’s bad that it got this close, it’s good that someone stopped that plane. I’m not saying this is evidence that the system is flawless, but this is better than at least one alternative

    • @[email protected]
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      147 months ago

      I think this tells that the system is working, since even with shit going south they were able to save the day by aborting lift off.

      It tells that the system/process can work through issues, which is even more critical than flawless function

      • @Dabundis
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        127 months ago

        Yeah, it really looks like a case of “the first layer of administrative safety control failed, and another layer kicked in to prevent a dangerous scenario.”

      • @Soup
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        57 months ago

        Yea but it’s not like we don’t have the technology and skill to be able to keep the plane from moving at all. This story should be “airports so busy that there are constant conflicts with schedules” not “these planes nearly obliterated each other.”

        It’s a good thing that we have fail-safes but this was too close. Aviation standards need to be airtight.

    • Flying Squid
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      37 months ago

      This happens once in a while. It rarely ends in disaster.

    • @[email protected]
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      17 months ago

      Yeah, I’d rather have a thousand news stories of near-misses than one about a crash with casualties