Southwest and Alaska Airlines planes nearly collide on Nashville airport runway, spurring FAA investigation

By Pete Muntean, CNN

(CNN) — The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are probing a near-collision between two planes on an airport runway in Nashville Thursday morning — the latest close call involving commercial flights.

The crew of Alaska Airlines flight 369 “discontinued their takeoff” at Nashville International Airport around 9:15 a.m. CT when Southwest Airlines flight 2029 “was cleared to cross the end of the same runway,” according to the FAA. It is not clear how close the two aircraft came to colliding.

The Alaska Airlines flight carrying 176 passengers and six crew members braked so suddenly that the crew “reported blown tires during the braking,” the FAA said. No injuries were reported.

“The Alaska aircraft, on its way to Seattle, had received clearance for takeoff from Air Traffic Control,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “We’re grateful for the expertise of our pilots who immediately applied the brakes to prevent the incident from escalating.”

Southwest Airlines said in a statement it is in “contact with the FAA and NTSB and will participate in the investigation” and “nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees.”

The NTSB is investigating the incident between the Alaska Airlines plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, and the Southwest Airlines aircraft, a Boeing 737-700, the agency said in a post on X.

This is the 14th NTSB runway incursion investigation involving commercial or for-hire flights since the start of 2023. The incident in Nashville also comes just two days after two Delta Air Lines planes collided as both were taxiing for takeoff from Atlanta’s busy Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Just two months ago, a commercial flight at New York’s Syracuse Hancock International Airport aborted a landing as another plane was taking off from the same runway it intended to use.

There has been heightened awareness of runway incursions involving commercial flights at major airports after a near collision involving two planes on a runway at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in January 2023. The close call triggered multiple investigations and pushed the FAA to convene a rare, daylong safety summit.

A June NTSB report later found that the incident at JFK was caused by pilots who were repeatedly distracted in the cockpit.

Investigators at the time called for the FAA to install more technology at airports that can warn air traffic controllers of a possible collision on a runway.

One of the country’s closest near-collisions in years happened a month later, in February 2023, between a FedEx cargo plane trying to land and a Southwest Airlines jet trying to take off on an airport runway in Austin, Texas. Investigators in a June hearing said that it happened because of an air traffic controller’s faulty assumptions amid heavy fog.

The NTSB issued seven recommendations based on the Austin incident, including installing technology at all commercial airports to detect movement of planes and vehicles on the ground. The NTSB also called on the FAA to require pilots to report their position frequently when taxiing in limited visibility conditions.

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CNN’s Dalia Faheid, Gregory Wallace and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.