‘Abort’: FedEx cargo plane in near miss with Southwest Airlines jet in Texas

This is the terrifying moment a cargo plane came within metres of landing on top of a passenger jet in what could have been the worst air disaster in decades.

The two planes came within metres of colliding. Picture: Twitter

A FedEx cargo plane coming in to land at a Texas airport came within metres of colliding with a passenger jet taking off from the same runway on Saturday.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was “investigating a surface event at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Saturday, a possible runway incursion and overflight involving airplanes from Southwest Airlines and FedEx”.

The terrifying near miss, which was captured on flight trackers and air traffic control audio recordings, occurred in poor visibility conditions at around 6.30am on Saturday.

BREAKING: FedEx cargo plane narrowly misses crashing into Southwest Airlines plane taxiing on runway at Austin International Airport, Texas pic.twitter.com/2KF0ifokRF

— Intel Point Alert (@IntelPointAlert) February 5, 2023

Austin Airport almost gave us the worst air disaster in decades yesterday. These planes were less than 75 feet from each other, literally landing and taking off at the same time, one on top of the other. pic.twitter.com/KJbgD3IwiN

— Levi (@Levijameshere) February 5, 2023

Air traffic controllers had cleared the FedEx Boeing 767 to land on Austin’s Runway 18 Left, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement.

“Shortly before the FedEx aircraft was due to land, the controller cleared Southwest Flight 708 to depart from the same runway,” the FAA said. “The pilot of the FedEx airplane discontinued the landing and initiated a climb out.”

While it was not clear exactly how close the planes came to colliding, flight tracking data suggested there may have been as little as 75 feet (23 metres) clearance between the aircraft at one point.

“Southwest, abort! FedEx is on the go,” the FedEx pilot can be heard saying on the air traffic control audio.

The Southwest Boeing 737-700 later departed safely and landed at Cancun, Mexico that morning.

FedEx told CNBC its flight “safely landed after encountering an event”, while Southwest declined to comment.

The NTSB and FAA are currently investigating another near-miss runway incident that occurred on January 13 at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport between a Delta and American Airlines plane.

In 2017, two planes collided while taxiing at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, with the wingtip of a United Airlines flight coming into contact with the tail section of an American Airlines jet.

The deadliest plane crash in history occurred in 1977 on the runway at the airport on Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Two packed Boeing 747s — one operated by Dutch carrier KLM, the other by now-defunct Pan American — collided during takeoff, causing a catastrophic fire that killed 583 people on both aircraft.