A distracted controller, together with a supervisor attempting to repair a damaged printer, led to two planes nearly colliding in 2023, a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board discovered.
Southwest Airlines Flight 2493 was ready to take off on San Diego International Airport’s Runway 27, when controllers cleared a Cessna Citation personal jet to land on the similar runway, NCS reported at the time.
The Citation pilot noticed the Southwest Boeing 737 and requested the tower what was going on.
“Verify 4HV is still clear to land?” requested the pilot of the Citation.
“Citation 4HV, go around. Fly the published missed approach,” the controller responded.
Now, the closing investigative NTSB report illustrates what was occurring in the air site visitors control tower throughout these essential moments.
The native controller was distracted, the report mentioned, speaking to a different air site visitors control facility about the mistaken altitude assigned to a distinct departing plane.
“They stated that they had used poor judgment in prioritizing their duties,” the report learn. ”This responsibility prioritization was not in keeping with steerage.”
Meanwhile, the operations supervisor in the tower was centered on attempting to repair a printer which prints strips of paper with flight data and had jammed.
“They stated that they chose to troubleshoot the primary printer rather than switching to the backup, and that this drew their attention away from the operation at the time of the incident,” the report learn.
A floor radar alarmed in the tower and warned the controllers about the close to collision, however the planes have been already dangerously shut.
The NTSB report concluded the controller’s “poor judgment in duty prioritization” prompted the incident, and the supervisor’s focus on the printer contributed.
NCS’s Pete Muntean and Alexandra Skores contributed to this report.