An Alaska Airlines flight and a FedEx cargo plane came uncomfortably close to each other as they landed on intersecting runways at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday, officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that it was investigating a “close call” between the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 and the FedEx Boeing 777.
The pilot of the Alaska Airlines flight was told by an air traffic controller to abort the plane’s landing at around 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, because the FedEx flight had been cleared for the final approach to an intersecting runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The Alaska Airlines flight was arriving from Portland, Ore., while the FedEx plane was coming in from Memphis, according to Flightradar24, a flight-tracking website. It was not immediately clear how many passengers or crew members were on each plane.
The Alaska Airlines plane cleared the FedEx plane by 300 to 325 feet, according to preliminary data from FlightRadar24.
The F.A.A. and the N.T.S.B. are investigating the episode.
Alaska Airlines said in a statement that its pilots were “highly trained” to perform the “go-around” requested by the air traffic controller. The F.A.A. describes it as a “safe, routine maneuver” in which a plane aborts its landing procedure and returns to an altitude that allows it to make another approach.
FedEx said in a statement that its flight crew had “landed safely without incident” at Newark after receiving instructions from aircraft control.
The close call came about two weeks after a Singapore Airlines plane’s wing clipped the tail of a Spirit Airlines plane at Newark while pushing back from the gate.
Newark has struggled in recent years with air traffic controller staffing and equipment. The airport has also recently faced flight disruptions because the partial government shutdown has left Transportation Security Administration screeners working without pay. (Air traffic controllers are being paid during the partial shutdown because Congress had already funded their employer, the Department of Transportation.)
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
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