An American Airlines plane arriving at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport interrupted its landing and made a turn on instructions from an air traffic controller to avoid getting too close to another aircraft taking off from the same runway, reported the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The maneuver, carried out by American flight 2246 from Boston, occurred around 8:20 a.m. on Tuesday, less than two hours before another plane attempting to land at Midway Airport in Chicago was forced to ascend again to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway.
Southwest reported that flight 2504 from Omaha, Nebraska, landed safely "after the crew performed a precautionary holding pattern to avoid a potential conflict with another aircraft entering the runway," said an airline spokesperson in an email. "The crew followed safety procedures, and the flight landed without incident."
So far, American Airlines has not commented on the holding pattern at Washington National Airport.
In recent weeks, four major air disasters have occurred in North America. Among them is the February 6th accident of a passenger plane in Alaska, in which all ten people on board died, and the January 26th mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight at National Airport that claimed the lives of all 67 people on board both aircraft.
A medical transport jet with a pediatric patient, her mother, and four others on board crashed on January 31st in a Philadelphia neighborhood. That accident left seven dead, including all on board, as well as 19 injured.
Twenty-one people were injured on February 17th when a Delta flight flipped and landed on its roof at Pearson Airport in Toronto.