First lady’s plane forced to abort landing due to air traffic controller’s mistake

[eduardo89]

First lady’s plane forced to abort landing due to air traffic controller’s mistake

By Holly Bailey
Tue Apr 19, 5:31 pm ET
Yahoo! News
http://yhoo.it/f1jbXz

A plane carrying First Lady Michelle Obama was forced to abort a landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington Monday when it came too close to a cargo jet already on the runway.

Federal officials tell the Washington Post the incident was caused by an air traffic controller's mistake. The mishap comes as the Federal Aviation Administration deals with fallout over air traffic controllers caught sleeping and watching movies while on the job.



Glad to see government air traffic controllers doing such a great job.

[MelissaWV]

Glad to see government air traffic controllers doing such a great job.

Yes, the planes got within 3 miles of one another.

The public doesn't seem to know it, but it's the Government's own policies coupled with the supervisors' decisions that lead to crap like this.

When my dad was an ATC, they even read porn at the stations :p but his crew never lost a plane or had an incident. These others that were on mids and were alone and asleep... there should never be someone alone in the tower, period. It was sleep this time. Next time it could be a blood sugar issue, a heart attack, choking on a pretzel.

The abort was not because the planes were going to land atop one another. It was a routine reaction to two planes that were caught being too close. The second plane was first asked to slow down and get more distance between it and the first plane. Then it was asked to go around to ensure the runway would be cleared in time and any resulting turbulence from the huge military plane had lessened. Then the plane landed safely.

I'll never understand what joy people get from reporting only part of the story :(

[eduardo89]

That's all that happened?! Her plane was asked to wait until the plane on the runway took off and the airpace was clear for her to land??

Talk about making a story out of nothing...