Another day, another close call (thanks to The Aviation Herald for flagging this)…
In this post:
Southwest 737 & private jet have close call on MDW runway
This incident happened earlier today (Tuesday, February 25, 2025), at Chicago Midway Airport (MDW), and involves two aircraft:
- A Southwest Boeing 737-800 with the registration code N8517F was performing flight WN2504, from Omaha (OMA), and was supposed to land on runway 31C at Chicago Midway (MDW)
- A Flexjet Bombardier Challenger 35 with the registration code N560FX was performing a flight to Knoxville (TYS), and was supposed to depart from runway 22L at Chicago Midway (MDW), and was crossing runway 31C
The Bombardier Challenger 35 had been instructed by air traffic controllers to hold short of runway 31C. However, for whatever reason, the pilots taxied right across runway 31C, as the Southwest 737 was flaring to land.
Fortunately the Southwest pilots were paying close attention, and they initiated a go around, a moment before touchdown. The Bombardier pilots were given a phone number to call, for a pilot deviation.
According to ADS-B data, the Southwest 737 was only feet above the runway surface, and around 1,600 feet short of the intersection where the other jet was taxiing. The Southwest 737 ended up passing the intersection at roughly 150 feet above ground level.
On the climb out, one of the Southwest pilots can be heard asking the air traffic controller “how did that happen?” The controller doesn’t respond to that, but advises the Southwest flight to switch frequencies (which is fair, since the priority is on safety, and everything else can be discussed later).
You can see an excellent VASAviation recreation of the incident below, including the air traffic control audio. Honestly, the Flexjet pilots seemed totally unprepared, and the entire communication on their part was abysmal.
The Southwest pilots did a stellar job here
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating this incident. It’s clear that the fault here lies with the Bombardier Challenger 35 pilots, since the air traffic controller gave them clear instructions to hold short of the runway, and they ignored it. So the investigation should look into why the pilots ignored those instructions, and why they were confused.
Honestly, one has to wonder what the Bombardier Challenger pilots were thinking. You have two pilots in the flight deck, and before crossing a busy runway, you’d think that they’d make sure that they do in fact have clearance to cross, and also make sure that there’s not any plane on short final.
Fortunately the Southwest pilots did a stellar job, and avoiding these kinds of situations while landing isn’t always as easy as it seems:
- When you’re on approach, it can be hard to tell if a plane has crossed the “hold short” line or not, and we’re often talking about split second decisions
- Once the plane starts flaring, the nose points up, and it can be harder to see over the dash and down the runway
So thank goodness the Southwest pilots were paying attention, as they prevented a potential catastrophe. Of course in recent years we’ve seen so many close calls on airlines, and as we’ve seen so far in 2025, sometimes there’s a split second difference between a close call and a heartbreaking tragedy.
Bottom line
A Southwest Boeing 737 and Flexjet Bombardier Challenger 35 had a close call today at Chicago Midway Airport. The Southwest aircraft had been given clearance to land, while the Flexjet aircraft had been told to hold short of the runway. For whatever reason, the Flexjet pilots didn’t hold short. Fortunately the Southwest pilots realized the danger at the last second, and performed a go around.
What do you make of this Chicago Midway close call?
My son was on that Southwest Plane that business pilot needed to be taken back to be questioned by FAA and suspend license i can't stop thinking about the disaster that was about to happen, We also need to be so greatful to pilot of SW plane Great Job
The "low budget airlines" have very skilled pilots, as well!
Shortage of skilled personnel across the industries, Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and the Baby Bust that followed.
Has nothing to do with DEI, the US airports and procedures are vastly unsafe compared to the rest of the world.
- The airport layouts are confusing and designs are just terrible, maybe invest of proper stop bars and follow the greens ?
- Instead of flying ILS or RNP approaches they want to do visuals even at night, no one can see other traffic safely at night over cities… Lufthansa even refused...
Has nothing to do with DEI, the US airports and procedures are vastly unsafe compared to the rest of the world.
- The airport layouts are confusing and designs are just terrible, maybe invest of proper stop bars and follow the greens ?
- Instead of flying ILS or RNP approaches they want to do visuals even at night, no one can see other traffic safely at night over cities… Lufthansa even refused it in the past and rightfully!
- ATC believes they are the best but they are among the worst in the world, their phraseology is utter nonsense, fly 250 on the knots…yea Offcourse Im sure in LHR they would say that.
- ATC asking pilots to ask ramp where they park? Maybe you should know as ground controllers, the rest of the world does.
- There is often congestion on ATC frequencies, more staff is clearly required. Could also use some training on how to accommodate pilots, Id have to do a whole 50 page powerpoint to explain my plane can’t take of from your proposed runway and I need a longer one because of my take off weight. Should not require that much effort !
- Ground controllers don’t know their airports, they don’t know which turns a heavy can make even though they have the same airport charts as pilots they would happily instruct you to do turns and give taxiways that are unsuitable your aircraft. Unreal
- Uncontrolled ramps at airports like ORD/JFK and many more, only in the US a big airport has an uncontrolled ramp.
- VFR airspaces where they shouldn’t be, well maybe they don’t fit close to big airports?
- Inappropriate runway usages, who lands at 747 at a 2500m snowy runway in the biggest cities of their country? Oh JFK among others in the US.
- Poor infrastructure, giant potholes on Taxiways to a point if you stop on them you need a tow truck to get moving again… 1st world country?
These are just a few, the US is due for an overhaul. Im not saying all is bad, there are some great stuff especially toward weather avoidance ATC in the US tends to be very proactive but if you want to be the best you need to excel at everything not just some stuff.
I always thought spain was the worst due to the amount of TCAS RAs we used to have there but they upped their game a lot.
Maybe it’s time for the US to look once beyond their airspace and learn from Europe or Asia?
This is nuts!
Maybe a stupid idea…but the use of “traffic lights” or “barriers” managed from the control tower to the crossing points of runaways couldn’t help to avoid such risks?
I was 8 years old when I first thought of this idea. That was many many years ago now!
Yeah, to me it is pretty obvious what happened here and it is compounded by the fact they were taxiing down a runway vs a taxiway which meant regular signage and clear limit line markers that you were about to cross a runway were not present (you can see this in Google Maps satellite footage. They didn't realize 31L was a runway and not a taxiway as it is barely wider than some of the taxiways. Meanwhile 31C and 31R are significantly wider.
The Google Maps images are old. Google Earth has newer ones and they now have stop bars on 4L clearly marking the runways it crosses.
Good thing the Southwest Pilots saw what was going they are heroes I wonder if there are any blind spots when the aircraft nose is pitched up about to land.
References: Proteus Airlines Flight 706
I just dropped a new YouTube short get at me omaat gang. Appreciate ya.
I generally feel like they were going to crash. What a close accident.
That almost certainly happened. Those pilots should be given medals. Assuming the FO is sitting in the right seat must have called the go around. I wonder what the captains vantage point was in relation to the light aircraft and runway in addition to why ATC wasn’t paying attention if they were they would have called for the private jet to stop or Southwest go around.
We need mayor pete back it's not safe to fly without him
You’re joking, right? This stuff’s been going on the last 4 years. He’s the one who caused all of this. Can’t fix something of that scale in 1 month. BTW, where were you complaining these last 4 years? You all were silent until the people voted your morons out of office. Thank God for democracy! Thank God Biden, Kamala and Pete got voted out!
Lol, Pete caused this? Get real. Close calls like this are just far more common that the layman thinks, it just appears like more incidents are happening because after the DCA collision and the Delta barrel roll, news media is watching aviation far more closely. Same thing for when Evergiven blocked the Suez or Dali hit the Francis Scott Key bridge and we started hearing about dozens of other close calls in the maritime cargo...
Lol, Pete caused this? Get real. Close calls like this are just far more common that the layman thinks, it just appears like more incidents are happening because after the DCA collision and the Delta barrel roll, news media is watching aviation far more closely. Same thing for when Evergiven blocked the Suez or Dali hit the Francis Scott Key bridge and we started hearing about dozens of other close calls in the maritime cargo world, which, if you actually followed that space, was business as usual and wouldn't have been noteworthy for the media had they not happened after major accidents.
I'm not sure how bringing back someone unqualified for a job would help. Not to mention any current issues would be a result of his policies from the past 4 years ago. New changes wouldn't have time to go in effect. The real "issue" is the fact this stuff has been going on for a long time, it's just the media bringing extra attention to it due to Trump being in office.
Please, enlighten us on the policies implemented by Pete that caused a pair of private jet pilots to disregard their ATC instructions.
DEI or not the current experience level of pilots is weak. They're now trying to ram recent flight school grads with minimum time into career jobs. I got hired at NWA with almost 7000 hours. Now new hires are flying jet airliners with 1500. These events will increase till they quit force retiring experienced pilots.
Pilot was already showing clear audible signs of confusion about which runway to hold short of vs. proceed through. (misnamed the runways, hesitant about which one was to proceed through first, then hold) The multiple runways layout of Midway was probably a confounding factor. And pilot loss of focus.
I always wondered why the air traffic industry never implemented a computerized traffic management system protecting intersections and trajectories similar in philosophy to what trains use.
The system would be embedded in the vehicles for obvious reasons (can't really have traffic lights on the ground for a flying aircraft) though physical traffic lights would be handy as redundancy for slow moving traffic.
It seems appalling that traffic management is still enforced by voice...
I always wondered why the air traffic industry never implemented a computerized traffic management system protecting intersections and trajectories similar in philosophy to what trains use.
The system would be embedded in the vehicles for obvious reasons (can't really have traffic lights on the ground for a flying aircraft) though physical traffic lights would be handy as redundancy for slow moving traffic.
It seems appalling that traffic management is still enforced by voice commands and relies on assumptions that human understand and comply to orders where the train industry has demonstrated for decades that a computerized block system is safer. In train TC, radio or telephone traffic control is being phased out except on very low traffic lines.
It's several orders of magnitude more complex than trains, but they've been trying to update the system for some time now.
I experienced this once landing in PVR except it wasn’t another plane on the runway, it was a donkey.
Additionally, Ben, the VASA Video for the SFO low-approach has been uploaded.
Something big needs to change in aviation safety. This is out of control with almost daily near mass casualty, event events. I would be pro having the military take over control towers until we have a clear plan with the technology in place.
Military taking over is almost universally a bad idea. This introduces "chain of command" into decision making meaning a higher rank can give a direct order to ignore safety regulations, and a controller would have to follow that.
This once happened when I was on a UA flight to IAH. We touched down for a split second before the engines roared and we were up in the air before I realized what happened. The pilot later announced there was traffic on the runway. Clear day. Light winds.
Clearly, SW pilots were while males and Flexjet pilots were DEI hires. However, if god forbid, SW pilots weren’t attentive enough, they too would have been DEI hires.
All this is do obvious and yet people still can’t see it.
You okay?
This crap is becoming the new Tim-Dunn-imitators.
Meaning every thread is seemingly going to have some numbskull parodying "D.E.I. hire!" statements, and thinking he's funny.
I think the country is finally getting it. These important jobs are reserved for alpha males.
I think he's trying to be funny(?), given the wording of "However, if god forbid, SW pilots weren’t attentive enough, they too would have been DEI hires" however when we're dealing with a topic like DEI where there's already so much blatant racism out there, I think it's best to shy away from jokes/sarcasm. It's just adding fuel to the fire.
Clearly both pilots in the private jet were trans.
Clearly a joke referencing the woman pilot who crashed landed the plane that flipped upside-down as well as the female helicopter pilot that flew into the AA flight, killing all aboard.
Amazing SW pilots!
Add in the relatively short runways and a physically constrained airport with a dense layout of runways and taxiways, it’s a recipe for a disaster.
Absolutely inexcusable from the Flexjet pilots. Not only ignored ATC, they didn't bother to look out the windows before crossing? Thank god for those SW pilots... saved many lives today.