Two American Airlines aircraft were mistakenly assigned the same flight number, leaving both jets operating under an identical call sign as their flight paths converged before an air traffic controller detected the error and intervened.
One of the aircraft was arriving from Chicago, while the other had departed Phoenix.
The Chicago-bound flight had been delayed because of severe weather, leading American Airlines to deploy another aircraft for the Phoenix departure. However, both flights were ultimately operated using the same flight number, according to news agency AP.
The situation became potentially dangerous when the two aircraft moved toward converging flight paths. Had the pilots interpreted the controller’s instructions as being intended for their respective aircraft, the incident could have resulted in a collision.
The air traffic controller quickly identified the confusion and began differentiating between the aircraft by referring to them as “American 2482 on the arrival” and “American 2482 on the departure”.
He ordered the arriving aircraft to stay above the departing jet while instructing the departing aircraft to limit its climb, ensuring the required vertical separation was maintained as the two flight paths came together. The controller also made sure both pilots had visual contact with the other aircraft while they were still several miles apart.
Once the two jets had safely passed one another, the pilot of the arriving aircraft commended the controller for managing the situation.
“Nice work,” the pilot told him.
“It could have been disastrous, but I’m glad it worked out,” the controller replied.
The controller, who said he had spent 25 years working in air traffic control, later described the incident as an extremely rare occurrence.
“I’ve never seen two aircraft pretty much merge with the same call sign. That’s pretty incredible,” he said.
Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the incident may have resulted from a failure within the airline’s dispatch operation to identify that two aircraft carrying the same flight number would be in the air simultaneously.
The Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines are expected to examine how the flight-number error occurred.
American Airlines said its pilots and air traffic controllers maintained the required separation between the aircraft and that both flights completed their journeys safely without incident.
