A Southwest Airlines plane rapidly dropped in elevation after departing from the Los Angeles area on Friday, with passengers posting online that the pilot was forced to rapidly change course to avoid a potential collision with another aircraft.
Flight 1496 from Hollywood Burbank Airport to Las Vegas plummeted rapidly, lifting passengers out of their seats and injuring two flight attendants.
The crew “responded to two onboard traffic alerts… requiring them to climb and descend to comply with the alerts”, Southwest said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was investigating the incident. It comes less than one week after a similar near-miss.
“Ensuring the safety of everyone in the national airspace system remains our top priority,” the FAA statement added.
Stand-up comedian Jimmy Dore was onboard the plane, and was among the passengers saying that the erratic move was due to a near-miss with another plane.
“Pilot said his collision warning went off & he needed to avoid plane coming at us. Wow,” Dore wrote on X. “A flight attendant needed medical attention.”
His colleague Stef Zamorano added that all the passengers applauded when the plane landed.
Caitlin Burdi told Fox News that passengers were “screaming” as the plane rapidly fell.
“It was terrifying. We really thought we were plummeting to a plane crash,” she said.
She added that the pilot came over the speaker afterwards to say that the plane had almost hit another plane, and that they had lost contact with air traffic control.
“I just remember him saying, ‘What just happened was we almost collided with another plane, and I had to make the emergency attempt to go under because we lost service with the air traffic controller,'” she said.
According to CNN, the plane was nearly intercepted by a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet after less than six minutes in the air.
The jet crossed less than two miles in front of it, and within a few hundred feet of its altitude, CNN reported, citing flight tracking data. It had departed from El Pas, Texas and was flying to Oxnard, California.
The Southwest statement said that the flight continued on to Las Vegas, “where it landed uneventfully”, and that the airline is “engaged” with the FAA “to further understand the circumstances”.
“We appreciate the professionalism of our Flight Crew and Flight Attendants in responding to this event. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees.”
It comes less than one week after a Delta regional flight from Minneapolis was forced to make a sudden evasive manoeuvre to avoid a US military bomber.
