An Israir airlines passenger airplane and a plane belonging to Italian aviation company
Eurofly nearly collided Sunday at the Ben-Gurion Airport.
An investigation launched by the Transportation Ministry revealed that the runways on which the incident occurred is being used both for takeoff and landings due to renovations carried out on one of the other runways.
According to the probe, the Italian plane failed to request permission from the control tower before entering the runway in preparation for takeoff. At the same time, an Israir craft was preparing to land.
The control tower ordered the Italian plane to stop moving, but the pilot apparently did not understand the instructions and kept progressing towards the runway.
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An El Al plane that was waiting in line for takeoff noticed what was going on and reported it immediately to the control tower.
Since it was too late to have the Italian plane withdraw, the control tower had to cancel the landing instructions given to the Israir craft, which was forced to remain in the air until the other plane took off.
The incident is now being investigated in order to determine what caused the misunderstanding between the Italian plane and the control tower.