Plunge to Avoid Another Plane Sets Off Panic, Screaming

Passengers on a Southwest Airline jet that took a dramatic plunge said they were told by the pilot that they had nearly struck another plane before landing safely in Las Vegas. The Boeing 737 jet dropped hundreds of feet in a little over 30 seconds on Friday, according to a flight tracking website. Caitlin Burdi, who was on the airliner, said it took a short plunge and then a more drastic drop as passengers screamed in terror, the AP reports. "We really thought we were plummeting to a plane crash," Burdi told Fox News Digital at the Las Vegas airport. She said the pilot told passengers they had just missed a collision.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which is investigating, said Southwest 1496 was responding to an onboard alert about another aircraft in its vicinity. Southwest said the crew responded to two alerts that required the pilot to climb then descend. The flight had left Hollywood Burbank Airport just before noon. Another passenger, comedian Stef Zamorano, said she saw a woman who wasn't wearing her seat belt shoot up and out of her seat, and a man next to her was clutching her arm. A woman across the aisle was panicking, she said. "She was pretty much verbalizing how we all felt, saying, 'I want to get off this plane. I want to be on the ground,'" Zamorano told the AP.