Nearmiss at Dallas, or News Hype?
Dateline May 14, from MSNBC News, any clarification from UPS or AA crew?:
"IT’S SATURDAY night at one of the nation’s busiest airports, Dallas-Ft. Worth. A small cargo plane is given permission to taxi from a United Parcel Service hangar, across two runways, to what’s called the “General Aviation” airplane parking area. Meanwhile, American flight 2394, with 60 passengers aboard, is waiting to take off for Chicago.
As the cargo plane crosses, clearing the second runway, controllers give the American plane the go-ahead to take off, and it rolls.
But, in the dark, the cargo plane makes a wrong turn and mistakenly taxies back onto the active, take-off runway, directly in the path of the speeding American plane. The American pilot sees disaster looming, seconds away, out his front window. He swerves his plane to the right, lifts the nose up, long before the plane has reached the speed normally required for take-off, and struggles to get airborne — his only chance at missing the cargo plane.
It works, and the American plane climbs out, missing the cargo plane by what the pilot later tells his airline was only ten to twenty feet.
Ten to twenty feet is an incredibly slim margin for a plane with a wingspan of almost 100 feet, hurtling down the runway at more than 100 miles an hour. In fact, it was so close that, at first, the American pilot feared he had actually clipped the cargo plane.
Finally in the air, but worried about damage to his own plane, the American pilot radios back. After some moments, assured the two plane have missed, he radios again, “We’re quite shaken, but we’re going to continue to Chicago.”