Will No Longer Land Traffic On 22L When 13s Are Also
Active
On Friday, two airliners came within
about a half-mile of each other over New York's JFK International
Airport, according to CNN... the second time this week separation
concerns over JFK have made headlines.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown confirmed a Delta Air Lines airliner
went missed Friday afternoon, and came within 600 feet vertically
and a half-mile laterally of a Comair CRJ900 taking off on a
perpendicular runway.
Judging from the ATC recording archived on LiveATC.net, the
situation was not particularly tense... contrary to somewhat
breathless reports in the general media.
The pilot of Delta Flight 123, a Boeing 757-200 inbound from
Shannon, Ireland elected to abort his approach to land on runway
22L, which put the plane's flight path in conflict with Comair
Flight 1520 that had just departed off Runway 13R.
The JFK tower controller calmly directed the Comair jet to turn
right immediately after the Delta jet called its intent to
go-around, then directed the Delta airliner to turn left.
It's possible this incident would have gone unnoticed, were it
not for another conflict that occurred Monday over JFK, under
almost identical circumstances.
As ANN reported, in that case a Cayman Airways
Boeing 737 on approach to runway 22L executed a missed approach and
conflicted with a Linea Aeroea Navional de Chile 767 departing off
13R.
Again, tower controllers intervened to attempt to resolve the
conflict, assigning both aircraft diverging headings. The FAA said
the two planes involved in the July 7 incident came no closer 300
feet vertically, and no more than a half-mile horizontally That
account differs from the one given by air traffic controllers,
though... who claim those two jets came within 100 feet vertically
and much closer than a half-mile horizontally.
The similarities between both incidents -- combined with recent
media attention about the potential issues stemming from
simultaneous operations on perpendicular runways at major airports
-- almost guarantee the NTSB will investigate.
Friday's incident prompted the FAA to implement procedures to
ensure "that aircraft of one runway clear out of the path of the
other runway before the second flight comes down on the other
runway," spokeswoman Brown said. "We've had two events recently and
I think we want to make sure the appropriate safety margins are in
place."
Dean Iacopelli, spokesman for the New York Chapter of the
National Air Traffic Controllers Association, confirmed the FAA has
"terminated that perpendicular simultaneous approach
procedure."