By David Shepardson
(Reuters) – A Southwest Airlines jet was forced to abort a landing at Chicago Midway airport on Tuesday in a serious near miss incident after a business jet entered the runway without authorization, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Southwest Flight 2504, a Boeing 737-800 arriving from Omaha, flew overtop a FlexJet Challenger on the runway and performed a go-around narrowly avoiding the aircraft on the ground. The FAA is investigating the incident, which occurred around 8:50 a.m. CT.
A dramatic video posted on social media showed the Southwest jet nearing touch down and then pulling up and above the FlexJet that had crossed Runway 31C.
Southwest said the crew “followed safety procedures and the flight landed without incident.”
Over the last two years, a series of troubling near-miss incidents has raised concerns about U.S. aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air traffic control operations.
In October, the FAA said it was opening an audit into runway incursion risks at the 45 busiest U.S. airports.
Democrats in Congress seized on the fact that the Trump administration recently fired 352 FAA workers, including some involved in safety operations.
“Maybe not the best time to fire hundreds of FAA workers, tell the remaining workers you want to ‘put them in trauma’,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said the people fired did not include any “safety-critical positions” or any air traffic controllers. Duffy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FAA, which has aging technology and facilities and needs billions of dollars to modernize, is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels, prompting the aviation industry and lawmakers to call for action.
On Monday, the FAA said it was investigating another incident involving a possible close call in Houston on Sunday, when the crew of Air Shuttle Flight 6034 performed a go-around due to an unstable approach and conflicted with a departing SkyWest Airlines flight.
Air traffic control issued corrective instructions to both flight crews, but the Air Shuttle crew climbed above their assigned altitude.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese, Marguerita Choy and Nia Williams)
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