A Wing And A Prayer: Planes That Almost Crashed

Plane Aborts Landing

The Boeing 737-430 only narrowly avoided catastrophe as its wheels scraped the runway and the quick-thinking pilot pulled the plane up. The pilot was fighting heavy winds and came very close to crashing on the runway. As you can see, the passenger plane was attempting to land at Václav Havel Airport in Prague, Czech Republic.

According to reports, that crazy-terrifying dip caused the left wing to graze along the ground for a few brief moments. The passengers were forced to “grab a hold of their seats” and the plane “swayed back and forth” but no serious damage or injury was reported. The pilot of the passenger plane was credited for heroism in “saving” the flight from an almost-certain crash. He took the plane back up and circled around for another attempt at landing.

Delhi Airport Near Collision

In what appears to be another incident of controller error, an IndiGo flight (6E-769) from Lucknow to Delhi nearly hit a SpiceJet in 2016. They were nearly 40 meters away from the same runway. The pilots became aware of the situation, alerted the traffic control and shut down the planes.

According to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), “At times it may not be possible to eliminate human error whether it is aviation or other industries but continuous efforts are being made by AAI to offset such human errors through Standard Operating Procedures, recurrent training to the controllers and introducing technology.” So, yeah, human error was to blame. Nobody was hurt, and they claim to have a safety record that’s “comparable to best in the world.”