Two Planes Near Mid-Air Collision At JFK
- Two commercial planes took evasive action to avoid a potential mid-air collision near JFK Airport. - The aircraft reportedly were about a half-mile apart and within 350 feet of the same altitude. - FAA and airport officials will review the incident amid renewed safety concerns at JFK, per Patch coverage (patch.com).
Two passenger jets aborted their landings at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday after one plane drifted into the other’s approach path. (abc7ny.com) The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating why an American Airlines flight, using the call sign Brickyard 4464, deviated from its assigned course as Air Canada Jazz Flight 554 was on final approach around 2:30 p.m. Monday, April 20. Air traffic controllers told both crews to climb and change course, and both planes later landed safely. (abc7ny.com) Radio traffic captured the Air Canada crew reporting “TCAS RA,” an onboard traffic-collision alert that tells pilots to climb or descend when another aircraft gets too close. Controllers then instructed both aircraft to maintain separation until the conflict ended. (abc7ny.com) The incident landed in the middle of a string of recent close calls and crashes involving commercial aircraft. Two Southwest Airlines jets took evasive action near Nashville on April 18, and an Air Canada Express jet struck a Port Authority fire truck at LaGuardia Airport on March 22, killing both pilots. (apnews.com, cbsnews.com) JFK has already been the site of a major near-disaster in this safety cycle. On January 13, 2023, an American Airlines Boeing 777 crossed a runway without clearance while a Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 was accelerating for takeoff with 159 people aboard. (ntsb.gov) The National Transportation Safety Board said alerts from Airport Surface Detection Equipment, known as ASDE-X, warned controllers of the 2023 JFK runway conflict, and the agency renewed its call for more cockpit warning technology after issuing its final report on June 4, 2024. The board said interruptions and multitasking in the American cockpit contributed to that runway incursion. (ntsb.gov) The Federal Aviation Administration’s current runway safety plan covers 2024 through 2026 and says it is focused on reducing risk through data analysis, training, and new mitigation tools across the National Airspace System. The agency’s public runway-incursion statistics page says the data are subject to revision and was last updated on May 15, 2025. (faa.gov, faa.gov) For JFK, the next step is another federal review, another set of controller recordings, and another reconstruction of seconds that ended without injuries. Both crews followed the climb-out instructions, and the Federal Aviation Administration has not yet released a final cause. (abc7ny.com)
