A Delta jetliner was forced to abruptly abort its takeoff after another plane made a wrong turn near the runway at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport – the latest in a string of alarming close calls across the US.
Flight 1482 was barreling down the runway Friday night on its departure for Salt Lake City with 164 passengers and six crew members aboard, Fox 8 Live reported.
Around the same time, a private Learjet made a wrong turn onto a taxiway after landing and came too close to the Delta plane, which slammed on the brakes.
“The Learjet never crossed the hold short line. The controller cancelled the takeoff clearance for the Delta Airbus A321 out of an abundance of caution,” the Federal Aviation Administration said, according to Fox 13.
Pilots need to be cleared to cross hold-short markings separating runways from taxiways.
A passenger on the Delta flight described the unnerving incident.
“It was the first time I’ve really been scared on an airplane — and I’ve landed in Tucson with a fire truck spraying foam — and it didn’t bother me as bad as last night,” Dallas Richins told Fox 8 from his Utah home on Saturday.
He said the plane remained on the tarmac for nearly 45 minutes before returning to the gate to allow its brakes to cool down after the sudden stop.
“It was a disaster. I was on hold with Delta forever. Poor people, they didn’t have any staff there. So the flight attendants were rebooking people,” Richins told the outlet.
In a statement to Fox 8, Delta said: “Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and delay of their travels.”
The incident is the latest in a string of close-calls calls being investigated by the FAA.
Last week, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 came within 200 feet of slamming into an ambulance crossing the runway as it took off at Baltimore’s airport.
On March 18, another Southwest plane came within about a mile of a helicopter practicing landings at the Hollywood-Burbank Airport.
The controller instructed the pilot to abort the landing and go around.
In February, a FedEx plane nearly collided with a Southwest flight at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas.
The cargo plane was cleared to land seconds before the Southwest flight was cleared for takeoff on the same runway.
The FedEx pilot aborted the landing and went around.
And in January, an American Airlines plane crossed a runway at JFK International Airport that a Delta jet was using to take off.
The Delta pilots slammed the brakes to avoid a collision — with the Boeing 737 plane traveling at 115 mph stopping just 1,000 feet away from the other aircraft that had crossed from an adjacent taxiway, according to the FAA.