The Federal Aviation Administration said it is examining an incident that occurred at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport when two passenger jets came unusually close during landing operations.
According to the FAA, the crew of Republic Airways Flight 4464 initiated a go-around after the aircraft missed its intended approach path and moved too near Jazz Aviation Flight 554, which had been cleared to land on an adjacent, parallel runway. The FAA said both flight crews responded to onboard alerts and that the agency has opened an investigation into the event.
Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported that at the nearest point the two planes were separated vertically by approximately 350 feet and horizontally by about 0.62 miles. Following the aborted approaches, both aircraft conducted additional maneuvers and landed without further incident, according to reporting by an ABC News affiliate.
Air traffic control audio made available to the affiliate captured anti-collision alarms sounding in both the tower and the cockpit. Controllers directed pilots in each aircraft to take evasive actions, and the initial landing attempt was aborted before both jets subsequently returned for safe landings.
Pilots operating the aircraft advised controllers that they were responding to resolution advisories, or RAs, which the report described as the most serious level of onboard collision avoidance warning pilots can receive. The FAA confirmed it is investigating the sequence of events that led to the alerts and the go-arounds.
The incident follows a separate, deadly accident reported last month at New York's LaGuardia airport, in which an Air Canada Express aircraft struck a fire truck and the two pilots on the aircraft were killed.
The current FAA inquiry will seek to establish the operational chain of events, the effectiveness of onboard alerting systems and the air traffic control instructions that preceded the close encounter. At this stage the FAA has said only that it is investigating and that both flights landed without further incident.