Passenger jet had to abort takeoff to avoid runway collision at New
York's LaGuardia Airport
[May 20, 2025]
By JOSH FUNK
When a passenger jet roaring down the runway toward takeoff at New
York's LaGuardia Airport had to slam on the brakes earlier this month
because another plane was still on the runway, Renee Hoffer and all the
other passengers were thrown forward in their seats.
Hoffer wound up in the emergency room the next day after the near miss
on May 6 because her neck started hurting and her left arm went numb.
“The stop was as hard as any car accident I've been in,” Hoffer said.
Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation
Safety Board said Monday that they are investigating the incident in
which a Republic Airways jet had to abort takeoff and slam to a stop
because a United Airlines plane was still taxiing across the runway. The
close call happened despite the airport being equipped with an advanced
surface radar system that’s designed to help prevent such close calls.
In audio from the tower that ABC obtained from the website
www.LiveATC.net, the air traffic controller said to the pilot of the
Republic Airways jet: “Sorry, I thought United had cleared well before
that.”
At the time that controller was directing the Republic Airways jet to
takeoff, a ground controller on a different radio frequency was
directing the United plane to a new taxiway after it missed the first
one it was supposed to use to exit the runway.
When the passengers got off the plane after the close call at 12:35
a.m., Hoffer said the gate agents refused to even give them hotel
vouchers for the night because they blamed the weather even though
another passenger said she had an app on her phone that showed another
plane was on the runway.
Hoffer said she's been stuck in a customer service nightmare since the
flight Republic was operating for American Airlines ended abruptly. She
said neither the airline nor the FAA has answered her complaints while
she continues to nurse the pinched nerve in her neck that the ER doctors
identified.
Both the airlines and the airport referred questions to the FAA.
The number of close calls in recent years has created serious concerns
for the FAA, NTSB and other safety experts. The NTSB’s investigation of
a February 2023 close call in Austin highlighted the concerns, but there
have been a number of other high-profile near misses. In one case, a
Southwest Airlines jet coming in for a landing in Chicago narrowly
avoided smashing into a business jet crossing the runway.
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In this Friday Jan. 25, 2019, file photo is the air traffic
control tower at LaGuardia Airport in New York. (AP Photo/Julio
Cortez, File)
LaGuardia is one of just 35 airports across the country equipped
with the FAA's best technology to prevent such runway incursions.
The ASDS-X system uses a variety of technology to help controllers
track planes and vehicles on the ground. At the other 490 U.S.
airports with a control tower, air traffic controllers have to rely
on more low-tech tools like a pair of binoculars to keep track of
aircraft on the ground because the systems are expensive.
Expanding the systems to more airports is something Transportation
Secretary Sean Duffy would like to do if Congress signs off on his
multi-billion-dollar plan to overhaul the nation's aging air traffic
control system.
But it's clear the technology is not perfect because close calls
continue happening. The FAA is taking a number of additional steps
to try to reduce the number of close calls, and it plans to install
an additional warning system at LaGuardia in the future.
But the rate of runway incursions per 1 million takeoffs and
landings has remained around 30 for a decade. The rate got as high
as 35 in 2017 and 2018. But generally there are fewer than 20 of the
most serious kind of incursions where a collision was narrowly
avoided or there was a significant potential for a crash, according
to the FAA. That number did hit 22 in 2023 but fell to just 7 last
year.
To help, there are efforts to develop a system that will warn pilots
directly about traffic on a runway instead of alerting the
controller and relying on them to relay the warning. That could save
precious seconds. But the FAA has not yet certified a system to warn
pilots directly that Honeywell International has been developing for
years.
The worst accident in aviation history occurred in 1977 on the
Spanish island of Tenerife, when a KLM 747 began its takeoff roll
while a Pan Am 747 was still on the runway; 583 people died when the
planes collided in thick fog.
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This story has corrected to show that the passenger is Renee Hoffer,
not Hoffner.
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