Pilots on a Southwest Airlines flight attempting to land at Chicago's Midway Airport were forced to climb back into the sky to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway on Tuesday morning. Airport webcam video posted to X shows the Southwest plane approaching a runway just before 9am Tuesday before its nose abruptly pulls up. A smaller jet is seen crossing the runway that the passenger plane was set to use. Southwest Flight 2504 safely landed "after the crew performed a precautionary go-around to avoid a possible conflict with another aircraft that entered the runway," an airline spokesperson said. "The crew followed safety procedures and the flight landed without incident."
Audio recording of communication between the crew and the tower includes the ground tower employee breaking off mid-message to the plane, the AP reports. The pilot then said "Southwest 2504 going around" and followed directions to climb back to 3,000 feet. CNN reports that after the plane reached that altitude, the pilot asked the tower, "Southwest 2504, uh, how'd that happen?" The second plane, described as a business jet, entered the runway without authorization, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. According to FlightRadar24, the planes were a little over 2,000 feet apart at their closest.
Flexjet, the plane's owner, said the company is aware "of the occurrence in Chicago" and is conducting a thorough investigation. John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, says the near-crash shows "the system worked exactly as it was designed to." That is because the Southwest pilot was aware that the other plane wasn't going to stop in time, he says. In probing the incident, FAA and NTSB investigators will likely look at factors including how well-staffed the tower was and whether instructions coming out of the tower were clear, he says.
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