© Reuters.
By David Sheparson
(Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration and the US National Transportation Safety Board are investigating a crashed landing in Austin, Texas, on Saturday morning by a FedEx (NYSE:) cargo plane that it had been scheduled to land on a runway where Southwest Airlines (NYSE:) plane was also cleared to depart, the agencies said.
The two planes nearly collided in an extremely serious security incident, two sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. The incident occurred in low visibility conditions in Austin.
“Shortly before the FedEx plane landed, the controller cleared Southwest Flight 708 from the same runway,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.
The NTSB said separately that it was investigating “a possible runway incursion and overflight involving Southwest Airlines and FedEx aircraft.”
The FAA said FedEx Flight 1432, a Boeing (NYSE:) 767 cargo plane, which had departed from Memphis, was cleared to land on runway 18 left at about 6:40 a.m. while the aircraft was at several miles from the airport. The Southwest plane had not yet taken off when FedEx was approaching the runway.
“The pilot of the FedEx aircraft aborted the landing and began a climb,” the FAA said.
It was unclear precisely how close the two planes came to colliding.
The Southwest flight to Cancun, Mexico, a Boeing 737-700, departed and landed safely at 9:47 am ET.
Southwest declined to comment. FedEx did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
