Two planes narrowly avoided crashing into each other in a terrifying near-miss incident just months after 14 people were killed in a crash at the same airport. Heart-stopping audio from the control tower reveals an air traffic controller screaming, “What are you doing?” as the two jets came close to disaster.
A UPS jet was coming into land at Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday night (April 14). A smaller SKQ-25 plane was taxiing on the runway at the same time. “Skylab two five stop!” an air traffic controller can be heard yelling as he noticed the small plane was heading towards the same runway where the Boeing 767 was about to land. The controller then can be heard quickly instructing the UPS plane to abort the landing and try again later.
“Skylab two five. What are you doing?” he then asked, The Sun reported.
Terrifying data from FlightRadar24 shows just how close the two planes came to crashing.
UPS spokesperson Michelle Polk confirmed that the plane en route from Atlanta performed the go-around procedure “beautifully”. While she could not confirm how close the UPS jet was to landing, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson said the “required separation was maintained”.
Muhammad Ali International Airport hosts UPS’s major delivery hub, Worldport, which processes two million packages each day. The facility has the capacity to handle 416,000 packages and documents per hour. UPS is the largest employer in the Louisville area, with 20,000 people working at the centre.
This near miss comes as a UPS cargo plane carrying 38,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into a petrol recycling plant at the same airport on November 4. Horror footage showed UPS Airlines Flight 2976, bound for Honolulu, Hawaii, speeding along the runway at Louisville as it attempted to take off at around 5.15pm (10.15pm BST). Video analysis indicates that the tail-mounted engine also malfunctioned, with bursts of flame visible from the exhaust.
Dashcam video shared online showed the aircraft slamming back down onto the runway, erupting into a wall of flames as black smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air.
The crash killed all three crew members on board and another 12 people on the ground, including a three-year-old child and her grandfather. The crash was the deadliest in UPS Airlines’ history. The crew consisted of Captain Richard Wartenberg, 57, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, who had accumulated about 8,613 total flight hours.
