President Donald Trump and the leader of the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the pilot of the private jet involved in Tuesday’s near-miss at Midway International Airport.
Southwest Airlines flight 2504 attempted to land at Midway around 9 a.m. Tuesday before nearly crashing with a Flexjet jet that had crossed into its landing path.
National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said during an interview on “Fox and Friends” that the Flexjet crew was instructed to “line up and wait and hold short of runway 31C, which Southwest was landing on, and they failed to do so.”
Homendy said the NTSB still has to conduct its investigation before coming to any final conclusions or taking any action against Flexjet’s crew.
“There’s a lot of information we still have to collect. We want to know what was going on in the cockpit of that airplane,” Homendy said. “We will collect air traffic control communications. We have asked for the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from Flexjet.”
An NTSB spokesperson told the Sun-Times a preliminary report on the incident will be issued in “about 30 days.”
Trump also pinned the blame on the Flexjet pilot in a social media post.
“GREAT JOB BY THE SOUTHWEST PILOTS IN CHICAGO. A NEARLY TRAGIC CLOSE CALL. PERHAPS SUSPEND THE PILOTS LICENSE OF THE OTHER PLANE, WHO MUST HAVE BEEN “SLEEPING!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Flexjet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pilot of the private jet appeared to misunderstand air traffic control’s instructions, according to audio from LiveATC.net.
Air traffic control on the ground instructed the pilot to turn left on “Runway 4 left, cross Runway 31 left and hold short of Runway 31 center,” according to the audio.
The pilot replied, “Alright, left on 2 – uh – 4 left, cross the 22, or 13 center, Flexjet 560.”
The air traffic controller immediately responded to the pilot, “Flexjet 560, negative! Cross 31 left, hold short Runway 31 center.”
The controller then told the Flexjet pilot to “hold your position” and “hold right there, don’t move.”
After the Southwest plane pulled up to avoid the private jet and reached 3,000 feet in the air, the pilot asked, “uh, how’d that happen?”
In a video of the incident posted to social media, the Southwest flight is seen close to touching down, then pulling up as a smaller business jet taxis across its path. The Southwest flight returned to the air before later landing safely and “without incident,” according to an emailed statement from Southwest Airlines.
No one was injured during the incident. The FAA is also investigating.