Shocking plunge by Southwest flight from Southern California was to avoid another aircraft
Las Vegas – Passengers aboard an airline plane in the southwest who took a dramatic step to avoid an opposite plane, the pilot had almost hit another plane before landing safely in Las Vegas.
The Boeing 737 Jet dropped hundreds of feet in just over 30 seconds during a flight on Friday, according to a flight tracking website.
Caitlin Burdi, who was on the flight, said that it had a short dive and then a more drastic drop while the passengers shouted with terror.
“We really thought we had dropped a plane crash,” Burdi told Fox News Digital in an interview at Las Vegas airport. She said that the pilot told passengers that they had almost collided with another plane.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that the flight, in the southwest of 1496, responded to an alert aboard another nearby plane. The FAA investigation. Southwest said the crew responded to two alerts that forced the pilot to climb and then descend. The flight left Hollywood Burbank airport just before noon.
Another passenger, the actor Stef Zamorano, said that she had seen a woman who was not wearing her seat belt shooting and getting out of her seat, and a man next to her hugged her arm. One woman on the other side of the alley panicked, she said.
“She was almost verbalizing what we all feel, saying,” I want to get off this plane. I want to be on the ground “”, Zamorano told the Associated Press on Friday. Another woman panicked and said she wanted to “get off this plane”.
The plane was in the same airspace near Burbank as a Hawker Hunter MK. 58, according to the flight tracking site, Flightaware. The files show that it is up to Hawker Hunter Aviation, a British defense contract company.
The company did not respond to messages on Friday and Saturday to request comments.
Southwest said the flight continued in Las Vegas, “where he landed without incident.” The airline said that she was working with the FAA “to better understand the circumstances” of the event.
This tight call is only the last incident to raise questions about air security following the open -air collision of January on Washington, DC, which killed 67 people.
