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A few days ago, two Delta aircraft had an incredibly close call over the runways of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), in what can only be described as a massive situational awareness failure on the part of the air traffic controller…
ATC sends Delta plane directly into path of another plane
VASAviation has the air traffic control audio and a visualization of an incident that happened a few days ago at Atlanta Airport. For some background on the two planes involved:
- Delta flight DL2472 was an Airbus A321 departing for Rochester (ROC) that was cleared for takeoff on runway 26L
- Delta flight DL1568 was a Boeing 737 arriving from Pittsburgh (PIT) that was cleared to land on runway 26R around the same time
You might not think much of this, except for the fact that the pilots of DL1568 opted to perform a go around at the last minute, as the Frontier Airlines jet landing before them didn’t clear the runway with enough buffer. Fair enough.
So at this point you had a Delta 737 going around above one runway, and a Delta A321 taking off on a parallel runway. That’s not ideal, but also not a huge issue, since they had an altitude difference, and also were both on their parallel headings…