An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-MAX9 with 176 passengers six members onboard blew its tires as the pilots performed an emergency stop on the runway at Nashville International Airport on Thursday to avoid colliding with a passing Southwest Airlines jet.
Alaska Airlines flight AS369 was due to depart Nashville at around 9 am on Thursday, but the airline confirmed that the three-year-old aircraft would now have to be inspected by engineers after aborting its takeoff while speeding along the runway.
Preliminary information suggests that the near-miss accident was caused when air traffic controllers allowed a passing Southwest Airlines flight to cross the runway at the same time that the pilots of Alaska Airlines flight 369 were cleared for takeoff.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it has already opened an investigation into the incident, which it described as a potential ‘ground conflict’.
Southwest Airlines flight WN2029, bound for Jacksonville, departed as normal from Nashville, and the carrier has yet to comment on the events of Thursday morning.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Southwest Airlines would be calling in thousands of pilots to attend an additional day of mandatory training at its Dallas headquarters following a series of mishaps and near-miss accidents that have plagued the airline in recent months.
The training will explore some of the recent incidents and discuss how flight crews can appropriately manage risks.
In July, the FAA confirmed that it had initiated a formal safety audit of Southwest due to an alarming rise in accidents, including a Southwest Boeing 737 that descended to just 150 feet of Tampa Bay.
Several months ago, a disaster at New York JFK was narrowly avoided when air traffic controllers accidentally cleared four different planes to cross the same runway that a SWISS Airlines Airbus A330 with up to 236 passengers onboard had just been given permission to take off from.
The pilots of Swiss flight LX17 ON April 17 started accelerating down the runway when the Captain spotted the planes crossing in front of them and quickly aborted the takeoff before it was too late.
The FAA recently announced plans to improve airfield safety in Nashville by installing new airfield surveillance systems that are designed to reduce the risk of runway incursions by “improving air traffic controllers’ situational awareness.”
The technology will also be installed at Austin-Bergstrom, Indianapolis, and Dallas Love Field.
The system is called Surface Awareness Initiative, and it uses ADS-B data to show ‘surface traffic’ – such as a taxiing aircraft – on an airport map. The tech will be deployed at airports that don’t have a surface surveillance tool.
