Disaster averted as plane stops just in time to avoid crash with private jet at Los Angeles airport (WATCH)
A near-disaster was narrowly averted at Los Angeles airport when a private jet carrying the Gonzaga basketball team almost crossed a runway as a Delta flight took off.
FollowA near-disaster was narrowly averted at Los Angeles airport when a private jet carrying the Gonzaga basketball team almost crossed a runway as a Delta flight took off. A video captured the tense moment a Delta Airlines flight nearly collided with a plane carrying the Gonzaga University basketball team on Friday afternoon.
Around 4:30 pm local time, when Gonzaga's chartered Key Lime Air Flight 563 was rolling across the runway, air traffic controllers urgently screamed, "Stop, stop, stop!" as heard in a video uploaded online.Â
The aircraft, which had just landed from Washington ahead of the team's game against UCLA, halted just in time as Delta Flight 471, an Airbus A321 bound for Atlanta, sped toward takeoff.
The alarming footage shows the private jet coming to a sudden stop mere seconds before the Delta flight soared into the sky. An aviation spotter, who witnessed the near-miss, noted, "In all my years of watching planes, I've never heard an air traffic controller shout 'Stop, stop, stop' like that."
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has launched an investigation into the incident. Authorities confirmed that air traffic controllers had instructed the Gonzaga plane to hold short of the runway. As the private jet rolled forward, controllers quickly ordered the pilot to halt, just as Delta's flight approached.
This near-miss follows the deadly crash of a Jeju Air flight in South Korea on Sunday, which killed 179 people, and a crash in Kazakhstan that claimed 38 lives.
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