Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 & Skywest Airlines plane almost collide mid-air - see commercial flights’ near miss

Two airplanes narrowly missed colliding mid-air over Portland Airport as an air traffic control staff quickly warned one of the aircraft to change direction. The incident happened on 16 October at around 4.14pm when an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 tried to land and a Skywest Airlines plane was taking off.

A YouTube video by the channel VASAviation caught the near-miss showing the planes coming into very close proximity to each other. The two planes allegedly came within approximately 250 vertical feet of each other. According to BAA Training, a global aviation training centre, commercial planes flying below 29,000 must maintain a vertical separation of 1,000 feet.

The incident was well within what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classes as a “near midair collision”. For it to be considered a near miss aircraft have to be within proximity of less than 500 feet.

However, Alaska Airlines reportedly believes a safe level of separation was maintained. A spokesperson told The Oregonian that “the crew of Flight 1299 followed cockpit indications and reacted immediately to increase separation from the other aircraft”. The spokesperson added that the aircraft “maintained a safe amount of lateral separation throughout the entire event”, while SkyWest also told the local outlet that “at no point was the safety of the flight compromised”.

According to the FAA, the pilot of the Alaska Airlines plane was going to land, but initiated a go-around when it almost collided with the Skywest flight. The FAA said in a statement: “While attempting to land at Portland International Airport, the pilot of Alaska Airlines Flight 1299 initiated a go-around due to wind and turned towards SkyWest Airlines Flight 3978, which had just departed. An air traffic controller instructed the Alaska Airlines pilot to turn away from the SkyWest aircraft.” The FAA added that investigations are still ongoing into how close in proximity the two airplanes got to each other.

The Skywest flight had taken off from one of the parallel runways at the airport. While the aircraft was told to turn right as it left the runway, the controller told the Alaska flight to follow the “runway heading” path. This Alaskan flight pilot, seemingly confused, then repeats the instructions meant for the other flight and starts to turn right into the path of the plane that just took off. The control tower then franticly communicated with the two flights The Alaska flight was rerouted to Redmond Airport and was not able to land in Portland until 11.45pm, according to FlightRadar24.