Southwest jet landing at Chicago Midway Airport nearly collides with private plane
The flight crew had to perform a go-around to prevent a potential incident.
An airline plane had a near miss with a private plane when it was landing at Chicago’s Midway Airport Tuesday morning.
(CNN) — A Southwest Airlines plane and a private jet that entered the runway without authorization experienced a close call at Chicago Midway International Airport on Tuesday morning, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Southwest Flight 2504 landed safely at the Chicago airport after the flight crew had to perform a go-around to prevent a potential collision, according to Southwest.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident, which took place at around 8:50 a.m. local time.
The close call came as the two agencies are investigating a string of safety incidents in recent weeks, including the deadly midair collision over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a Medevac jet crash in Philadelphia and a regional airline crash off the coast of Nome, Alaska, that killed 10 people.
Roughly 90 minutes before the Chicago incident, an American Airlines flight was forced to cancel its landing at Reagan National to avoid a departing plane, according to The New York Times.
“There was nothing gradual about it. It felt like the pilot had to make an emergency maneuver,” passenger Itai Vardi told the Times. In a statement to CNN, American Airlines called in “a standard go around, nothing out of the usual.”
In the incident at Midway airport, the Southwest plane was arriving from Omaha, Nebraska, and the private jet, a Bombardier Challenger 350, was headed to Knoxville, Tennessee, according to FlightRadar24.
Air traffic control instructed the private jet to turn left on “Runway 4L, cross Runway 31L and hold short of Runway 31C,” according to audio from LiveATC.net.
The pilot replies saying, “Alright, left on 2 – uh – 4L, cross the 22, or 13C, Flexjet 560.”
Then the air traffic controller on the ground immediately replies to the pilot, “Flexjet 560, negative! Cross 31L, hold short Runway 31C.”
Air traffic control audio from the tower also shows the moment the pilot of the Southwest plane chose to perform the go-around to avoid the private jet on the runway.
Air traffic controllers reply, “-west 2504, uh, roger that. Climb, maintain 3,000.”
Once the plane reached 3,000 feet in the air, the pilot asked the tower, “Southwest 2504, uh, how’d that happen?”
“The crew followed safety procedures and the flight landed without incident,” a Southwest spokesperson said in an email to CNN. “Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees.”
“We had no idea what happened,” passenger Emily Novak told CNN affiliate WOWT. “The pilot kept everyone so calm. There was no panic on the plane at all that I noticed, like he stayed very calm, just made it seem very routine and then we saw the video, we were like, what? Honest to God had no idea that even happened.”
“I just feel very thankful for who we had flying our plane,” Novak said.
Passenger Todd Engel told WOWT he always says a prayer before traveling, and said another prayer when he felt the plane accelerating while landing.
“The pilot did come on and say there was a plane on the runway,” Engel said. “Took another 10 minutes. We had to circle back around and land, but it was pretty amazingly calm on the flight.”
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement on X, “It is imperative that pilots follow the instructions of air traffic controllers. If they do not, their licenses will be pulled.” Duffy said he would provide additional updates when they become available.
The Bombardier Challenger 350 was operated by Flexjet, a company that manages aircraft on a “fractional ownership” basis.
“Flexjet adheres to the highest safety standards and we are conducting a thorough investigation,” the company said in a statement. “Any action to rectify and ensure the highest safety standards will be taken.”
The private jet can seat up to nine passengers, according to configurations posted on Flexjet’s website.
The planes came as close as approximately 2,050 feet before the Southwest plane initiated the go-around, according to FlightRadar24.
The Southwest plane flew over the private jet at an uncorrected pressure altitude of 900 feet, which was approximately 250 feet above ground after adjusting for pressure and elevation, FlightRadar24 said.
Between January 2023 and September 2024, the NTSB investigated 13 runway incursions involving commercial, or for-hire, flights. Those incursions varied in category from some with “no immediate safety consequences” to “narrowly” avoiding a collision.
CNN’s Andy Rose, Sara Smart, Sharif Paget, Taliah Miller, Pete Muntean and Matthew Rehbein contributed to this report.
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