New York Post:
Near miss on JFK runway Jumbo jets seconds from tragic hit
A Lufthansa jumbo jet speeding toward takeoff was forced to a screeching halt on a Kennedy Airport runway to avoid a catastrophic collision with an EgyptAir plane that made a wrong turn into its path, sources told The Post.
"Cancel take off! Cancel take off plans!" yelled a frightened air controller who saw that the Munich-bound Lufthansa Airbus A340 was headed toward a collision with an Egypt Air Boeing 777 at around 6:50 p.m. Monday.
"Lufthansa 411 heavy is rejecting takeoff," the pilot radioed back.
The aborted liftoff came as the German airliner was steaming down Runway 22R, where an EgyptAir plane was precariously perched less than a mile away, officials said.
"Those two were coming together," radioed an unidentified pilot who witnessed the near-disaster.
A few minutes later, a pilot aboard a Virgin America flight arriving from Los Angeles piped in: "That was quite a show."
The Lufthansa plane was cleared for takeoff seconds before the incident. Its pilots had to slam the brakes so hard, they worried they had become dangerously hot.
"It was close," said an air-control source who believes the EgyptAir flight ended up in the path of the Lufthansa jet after its crew took a wrong turn.
Officials could not say how close the two planes came to colliding. FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said it might take few days for investigators to sort out some of the basic details of the incident................