The pilot of a commuter jet nearly caused a mid-air collision over Newark Airport when he inexplicably waited several moments to take off after getting clearance from an air traffic controller, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report.
United Express Flight 4100, an Embraer ERJ 145, was cleared to lift off April 24 at about 3 p.m. when United Airlines Flight 1243, a Boeing 737, was three miles away from landing on an intersecting runway.
But the pilot didn’t take off until Flight 1243 was just one mile away — bringing the planes within about 50 yards of each other, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s radar data.
An air traffic controller can be heard in archived audio on the Web site liveatc.net telling Flight 1243’s pilot to “go around” the airport and abort the landing.
The controller then tells the United Express jet to watch out for the larger plane.
“Yeah, we were putting the nose down, and uh, he was real close, sir,” the Express pilot says.
Flight 1243 was coming in from San Francisco with 155 passengers, while Flight 4100 was heading to Memphis with 47 passengers.
“We continue to cooperate with the NTSB’s investigation,” said a spokeswoman for ExpressJet Airlines, which partners with United Express.
She declined to say whether the pilot from the near-miss was still on the job.
Neither plane was damaged during the incident.
The near-miss occurred at the northeast corner of the airport, where two north-south runways intersect with Runway 29, an east-west runway.
The shorter Runway 29 is normally used to provide additional capacity or offer an alternative if high winds make the other two more treacherous.
It has been used more frequently since the Port Authority, which operates the airport, began a 60-day rehabilitation of one of the two north-south runways last month.