Tragedy was narrowly avoided on Thursday, March 26, after a United Airlines flight narrowly avoided a fiery crash with a Black Hawk helicopter.
As reported by the New York Post, the incident occurred at John Wayne Airport in SoCal. United flight 589 was about to approach the airport at around 8:40pm local time. And that's when the scary part happened.
The Black Hawk helicopter passed directly into the plane's flight path. Luckily, they missed, but only by a matter of a couple hundred feet. The flight was seconds from a crash—they were close enough to get an anti-collision alert.
And air traffic control was absolutely baffled. "United 589, just want to clarify here. Did you get, uh... just a traffic call reference to the helicopter or did they restrict your altitude or anything?", the controller asked.
"We had a resolution advisory (an anti-collision alert) for United 589, RA," is what the pilot responded. The controller concluded that they're "going to be addressing that" because that obviously isn't ideal.
And it's a good thing nothing dangerous ended up happening. 162 passengers along with 6 crew were present on the United flight, which came from San Francisco.
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No One's Sure What the Helicopter Was Doing There
And it looks like people aren't sure what the Black Hawk was doing there. While flight data shows the helicopter came from Long Beach Airport, that seems to be the limit of what we know about the incident.
But that might change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into things. As well as this, United Airlines has released a statement about the shocking incident.
"During final approach to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, pilots on United Flight 589 were advised by air traffic control to watch for a military helicopter flying near the airport," they explained. "They saw the helicopter, and also received a traffic alert, which they responded to by leveling the aircraft. The United flight then landed safely."
While this is certainly a scary incident, we're really happy that no one was hurt. What a close call!
