In the past couple of years we’ve seen a lot of stories of close call at airports, and collisions between planes that were narrowly avoided. In this case two planes actually did collide on the runway, though fortunately there were no injuries.
In this post:
Private jet takes off without permission, clips other plane
This incident happened at around 4PM CT on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at Houston Hobby Airport (HOU). According to the FAA, a Hawker 25B private jet departed from runway 22 at Hobby Airport without permission, and it collided with a Cessna C510 private jet that was landing on runway 13R (and had received permission), as the two runways intersect.
The good news is that no injuries were reported. However, the damage is pretty significant, with the left wing of the plane taking off having clipped the tail of the plane landing. The aircraft that had taken off without permission and was damaged managed to safely return to Houston Hobby Airport minutes later, for an emergency landing.
The airport ended up being shut down for around four hours, given the debris on the runway plus the need to investigate.
Below is the VASAviation video about the incident, which contains both the air traffic control audio, and a visualization of what happened. However, the ATC audio only starts following the incident.
It remains to be seen why a jet took off without permission
It’s pretty clear that the pilots of the jet that was taking off were at fault here, as they hadn’t received permission to depart. The investigation will center around why they decided to take off — were they distracted, did they misunderstand certain instructions, or what?
I imagine this situation must have been terrifying for those onboard both aircraft. Thank goodness the planes just clipped one another, because I imagine if the timing were even half a second different, this could have had a much more catastrophic ending.
Listening to the air traffic control audio, the aircraft departing was told to climb up to 3,000 feet (presumably before air traffic controllers knew what had happened), and here’s how that interaction goes:
Pilot: “We just had a mid-air, we can’t do that.”
Air traffic controller: “Say what?”
Pilot: “Yeah, somebody just — you guys cleared somebody to take off or land and we hit them on departure.”
Air traffic controller: “Yes sir, you need to come back to the airport you said, right?”
Pilot: “Yeah, immediately!”
I imagine the pilot was probably pretty frazzled, but he sure seems to have an attitude, given that he’s the one who is at fault. I imagine that was just the stress in the moment. It’s also interesting how he acknowledges that the other plane had been cleared by air traffic control, which makes you wonder why they decided to depart?
Bottom line
Two private jets collided on intersecting runways at Houston Hobby Airport. One jet had been cleared to land, while the other jet reportedly took off without permission. Thank goodness that it was just a wing hitting a tail. If the timing had been even slightly different, this could have had a catastrophic ending.
What do you make of this incident?
These small planes should be banned. The rich can take the bus.
Obviously need to wait for more info to come out here but a couple things don't look great for the controller.
1. He seems totally unsurprised by the fact that N269AA was in the air and told him to proceed to 3000'. No indication in the audio that he wasn't cleared. Clearly the pilot thought he was.
2. He has 2 planes in line that he has to get out of the way for the emergency landing, and manages to get the sign of one of them wrong prompting no response.
Maybe the pilot was in ‘shrooms?
To the posters complaining on the other thread about controllers losing patience with pilots that can't follow instructions a tidbit here of just how stressful the Controller's job can get.
Post this on X/Twitter and the masses will clamor this is what wealthy people deserve. Now you see why Xi and similarly authoritarian leaders have the right idea? Speech can't be free--there need to be strict controls or else we degenerate as a society into cheering on private jet collisions.
That’s an impressively low bar you set to curb freedom of speech.
Someone on twitter might say something negative about private jet ownership therefore we should curb free speech and move to a Chinese model?
God forbid twitter devolve into a place where people feel free to say whatever they want and hide behind a computer screen… oh wait.
If you can't handle stress, you should find a different occupation.
An athlete competing at the highest level has a mental health problem. That's unfortunate, but that's not an excuse. You are just not up to the mental toll to compete at that arena.
Controller wanted the a plane that wasn't given takeoff clearance to maintain 3000? Talk about situational awareness for a position that is all about situational awareness.
Just because they weren't any...
If you can't handle stress, you should find a different occupation.
An athlete competing at the highest level has a mental health problem. That's unfortunate, but that's not an excuse. You are just not up to the mental toll to compete at that arena.
Controller wanted the a plane that wasn't given takeoff clearance to maintain 3000? Talk about situational awareness for a position that is all about situational awareness.
Just because they weren't any injuries or fatalities doesn't make this a less serious issue.
Was suppose to reply to @George Romey. Mistakenly replied here.
Boy China really working OT on the inter tube these days. They try so hard to regulate and hide public from their people and comment on threads pretending to be a different ethnicity. Like I always say (as a Chinese born) The govt of China and older boomer Chinese are like that middle child desperate for attention and NEED everyone to look at him and say yes you get a gold star today. And then all the other countries roll their eyes and give each other knowing nods.
Another preventable accident, luckily doesn't involve loss of lives.
How many more needless deaths we need before we do something about human error.
It's about time we have automation, pilots and ATC.