Two planes taking off from National put on collision course with plane trying to land

Two planes taking off from National came dangerously close to plane trying to land

Video: Listen to the raw audio of air traffic controllers discussing a near midair collision of three commuter jets on Tuesday at Reagan National Airport.

“This is a pretty big screw-up for a major airport,” the person said.

The official likened proper procedure to that of two flag men using radios to direct a single lane of traffic around a highway construction zone.

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Mishaps, near-collisions and more at the airport: Three planes nearly collided at Reagan National Airport Tuesday. Here are some other accidents and incidents in the air.

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“They say, ‘You’re good to go after the yellow pickup truck gets there,’ ” the official said. “When we change the direction of operation because of a wind shift, we’re supposed to give the specific call sign of the last plane. They didn’t use call signs [at National]. They didn’t do the coordination well.”

The world governed by air traffic controllers is split into three layers. Control centers handle planes at cruising altitude, terminal radar approach control, or Tracon, facilities work with pilots at lower altitudes, and airport control towers handle final landing approaches and takeoffs.

Commercial flight is a sequence of handoffs between controllers working the three levels. On Tuesday, Potomac Tracon in Warrenton contacted the National tower to suggest that planes land in the opposite direction to accommodate the wind shift.

News of the sleeping controller at National last year led to the revelation that controllers on overnight shifts at several other airports were napping on the job. The FAA suspended or fired several controllers for sleeping on the job last year, and the controversy contributed to the ouster of the head of the FAA’s air traffic control organization.

Another incident involving National Airport drew attention to errors made by controllers. In 2010, an airliner carrying Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) swerved to avoid another jet when the planes got so close that an onboard collision avoidance system was activated.

The FAA said that it recorded 1,234 operational errors in fiscal 2009 and that the number jumped to 1,887 in 2010, although there were more than a million fewer flights that year. The overwhelming majority of those incidents in which controllers allowed planes to get to close to one another did not put passengers at risk, but there were enough more-serious events that the National Transportation Safety Board stepped in to review them.

One that the safety agency scrutinized was a relatively minor mistake involving a plane with first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president, onboard.

Other cases the NTSB reviewed were more serious: A Boeing 737 nearly hit a helicopter while taking off from Houston; a Boeing 777 skimmed under a small plane on takeoff from San Francisco; a Boeing 737 nearly collided with a Cessna in Burbank, Calif.; an Airbus 319 passed 100 feet above the path of a Boeing 747 taking off in Anchorage; and an Embraer 135 taking off from Chicago took evasive action to avoid an in-bound twin-engine prop plane.