Yesterday, an American Airlines Boeing 737 and Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 nearly collided with each other in Boston due to an air traffic controller’s mistake.
Information has been released pertinent to the incident at hand.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
The Two Affected Flights in Boston…
The two affected flights involved in the incident at Boston was Delta Air Lines flight DL2351 from Dallas and American Airlines flight AA3161 bound for Charlotte.
Furthermore, the two airframes involved were N316PF and N328NB.
As per data from Planespotters.net, see the following on the respective aircraft.
N316PF is a 9.3 year old Boeing 737-800 that was delivered to American Airlines back in March 2017.
As for N328NB, this is a 25.1 year old Airbus A319 that originally started out life with Northwest Airlines back in June 2001, and following the merger with DL, was handed over to the mega-carrier in October 2008.
Delta Air Lines flight DL2351 was on final approach into Boston, and everything seemed normal, as American Airlines flight AA3161 was holding for a take-off clearance from the air traffic controllers.
However, after the Delta flight had been cleared to land, air traffic controllers cleared the American flight for departure for it’s flight to Charlotte.
The crew on the Delta flight noticed the American rolling down the runway and was quite close to each other at this point.
From there, the decision was made to perform a go-around, and they informed ATC as a result.
ATC then questioned the American flight, saying: “What are you doing?”.
The American pilot then responded to the Boston ATC saying they were given take-off clearance.
As a result of this, it meant that the two aircraft came close to each other, with an altitude difference as low as 450 feet, as per data from Flightradar24.
Incident Under Investigation…
As a result of this incident in Boston, it is understood that the Federal Aviation Administration will be investigating this incident.
As per @aviationbrk on X, Delta Air Lines released a statement saying “nothing is more important than safety, [and] confirmed the crew of Flight 2351 followed established procedures in coordination with Air Traffic Control and performed a go-around on approach into Logan Airport.”
It will be interesting to see what the outcome of this investigation will hold, to determine who is at fault.
But from the ATC recordings above, it could very well be the fault of the controller on shift.
As soon as we have more on this, then we will update you accordingly.
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