A Wing And A Prayer: Planes That Almost Crashed

Near Collision at Newark

In 2014, two jets nearly hit each other near the Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey. Combined, 200 passengers were in jeopardy by the near-miss. The United Airlines Flight 1243 was making a final approach, while an ExpressJet took off from an intersecting runway.

So, the incident was somewhat similar to the one at Barcelona Airport. Air traffic control ordered the UA flight to revise its flight path to avoid a collision. CBS News national transportation safety expert Mark Rosenker said, “The NTSB is going to be looking at all factors, if processes were shortcutted or if something else happened here to create this environment where this catastrophe could’ve occurred.”

Qantas Near Miss

Two Airbus A330 aircraft were involved in a near-collision incident, over Gulf St. Vincent, about 20 kilometers west of Adelaide, South Australia, in 2013. Reportedly, the air-traffic controller had allowed them to move toward one another, but an onboard, anti-collision alert warned them.

Although it hasn’t been confirmed exactly how close the planes came to hitting one another, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigated the incident. The air-traffic controller was put on leave, which is standard with any incident. One passenger, Gary Martin, said that he saw the near-collision but wasn’t worried. “They know what they’re doing,” he said.