A commercial pilot says collisions are super rare but investigators need to figure out if recent near-misses are coincidences or not
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
- A commercial pilot told Insider that flight collisions and near-misses on the runway are rare.
- In recent months, at least five near-misses or plane collisions have occurred on airport runways.
- He said investigators need to figure out whether this is a coincidence or a larger issue.
A commercial airline pilot told Insider that collisions between planes on airport runways are super rare, but that investigators need to look into whether the number of collisions and near-misses in recent months are a coincidence or part of a larger problem.
Gary Baumgardner, a commercial airline pilot out of LAX who has been flying planes since 2007, said, "safety and avoiding accidents are always a concern," adding that "close calls" have happened in the past.
"The only new concern is the amount of these incidents happening over a shorter amount of time," he said. "The question we should be asking ourselves is, can these incidents be attributed to something new, or are they just an unusual coincidence of incidents that happened to line up."
In 2023 alone, there have been at least five collisions or near-misses on airport runways, including incidents at JFK International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, and Newark Liberty International Airport.
This is not the norm, Baumgardner said, adding that "the airlines and the FAA have done a tremendous job at making air travel the safest way to travel."
He said that in his 16 years as a pilot, he has never witnessed a collision or a near-miss, adding that this "puts into perspective just how rare these actually are."
"Sometimes the laws of probability and statistics say all these events happening at once could be a coincidence, but we should be examining all possibilities," Baumgardner said.
He acknowledged that there might not be a deeper reason as to why this is going on.
"These things happen because we live in an imperfect world, and humans are prone to mistakes," Baumgardner said.
Despite these errors, Baumgardner insisted that the FAA, pilots, and flight crews are tasked, first and foremost, with keeping their planes and their passengers safe in every scenario and explained a number of safety provisions airlines have in place to ensure this.
"It's honestly amazing to think how smoothly and little mistakes are made 99.99% of the time," Baumgardner said.