An American Airlines flight bound for Boston was forced to abort takeoff at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday morning to avoid another plane that was landing.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it’s investigating what happened. It’s the second such incident at the Washington, DC, airport in the last six weeks.
“An air traffic controller cancelled the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134 because another aircraft was cleared to land on an intersecting runway,” the FAA said in a statement about Wednesday’s scare.
The same thing that’s been happening for a while, just delayed for a bit from covid. Airports are at peak capacity in a lot of places and building more isn’t happening fast enough. Air traffic controllers are overworked and understaffed, this makes mistakes more common. Especially when trying to have 20% more planes pass through an airport than it was really designed for.