COUNTYWIDE : Aborted Landing at John Wayne Probed

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating an incident in which an air traffic controller reportedly cleared a United Airlines Boeing 757 to land at John Wayne Airport while another airplane was on the same runway.

The United flight from Chicago was less than 100 feet from touching down Wednesday evening when the controller ordered the pilot to abort the landing, FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell said Friday.

Since the jet was already near the end of its descent, it had to touch down briefly before circling for another landing, O’Donnell said.

Federal regulations prohibit two aircraft from using a runway at the same time.

“It’s of a sufficiently serious nature that it’s not considered a non-incident,” O’Donnell said. “We are concerned about it and people are looking into it to determine what happened and why it happened.”

Through interviews so far, O’Donnell said, it appears the tower controller believed the single-engine Cessna Cardinal was leaving the runway when he cleared the United flight to land.

But the Cessna pilot remained on the runway, causing the controller to order the United pilot to abort the landing, O’Donnell said.

“At that point the (United plane’s) engines didn’t produce sufficient power to get the aircraft back up in the air until the aircraft touched down on the runway,” he said.

The preliminary investigation has not determined who was responsible for the near-collision, O’Donnell said.

The controller told aviation officials that he waited until the Cessna was moving toward the ordered taxiway before clearing the United flight to land, O’Donnell said.

But he said it had not yet been determined whether the Cessna pilot had grounds for not turning off the runway onto the taxiway.

O’Donnell said a handful of similar incidents occur throughout the nation every day as controllers handle about 175,000 aircraft, O’Donnell said.

A United Airlines spokesman said Friday that the company also is looking into the aborted landing incident.

Spokesman Alan Wayne said he has not been able to find out how many people were on the flight, but the airplane can hold up to 194 passengers.