Countywide : Small Plane Causes Jet to Abort Landing

An America West jet carrying 120 passengers aborted a landing at John Wayne Airport on Tuesday because a small Cessna that had just landed was blocking the runway, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.

Officials at the FAA, Phoenix-based America West and the airport said the aborted landing was handled so routinely that neither pilot filed a report and no investigation will be conducted.

“This was a non-incident,” said FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell. “Everyone saw what was happening and reacted the way they were supposed to. . . . It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

The pilot of the Boeing 737, arriving from Las Vegas, decided to to perform a “go-around” after he saw that the Cessna failed to turn off the runway at the first possible taxiway. He acted without waiting for advice from air traffic controllers, which FAA officials said he was obligated to do if he had any safety concerns.

The pilot of the Cessna missed the first taxiway and proceeded to the next one before leaving the runway, O’Donnell said. “That was the smart thing for him to do at that point,” he said. “He may have come in too fast or may not have been able to brake fast enough. . . . There are a whole range of possibilities.”

Officials declined to identify the Cessna pilot.

O’Donnell and America West officials said the incident was not similar to the deadly runway crash at Los Angeles International Airport last month, when a USAir jet slammed into a Skywest commuter plane.

In that incident the crew of the USAir jet did not see the Skywest plane until the larger plane was already touching down, and an air traffic controller has said she was unaware that the Skywest plane was on the same runway.

In the John Wayne incident, everyone had sufficient warning, officials said.

“This happens any number of times throughout the country,” O’Donnell said.

However, passengers aboard the jetliner were alarmed by what they saw and felt when the America West pilot suddenly applied more power during final approach and went around, airline officials said.

One of those passengers, Sam Smith, a Laguna Hills insurance and business consultant, said it appeared that the pilot knew all along that something was wrong because the plane’s first approach seemed unusually high as it crossed the San Diego Freeway.

The surprise came when the pilot waited until the jet was already over the runway before there was a sudden, upward thrust.

“The pilot calmly announced that we had to abort because of a light aircraft in our way or on the runway,” Smith said.

America West spokesman Mike Mitchell said: “There was simply no danger to passengers or anyone on the ground at the time. . . . Go-arounds are fairly common.”

FAA officials in Washington said they had no statistics on the number of go-arounds executed by pilots either at John Wayne or nationally.

O’Donnell, of the FAA’s Los Angeles office, said it is normal for air traffic controllers to give a jetliner permission to land before the plane ahead of it has exited the runway. “There were no violations of the FAA’s aircraft separation rules.”