Chicago – A cargo plane and a departing passenger jet came within several hundred feet of each other at O’Hare International Airport, federal aviation officials said Monday.
United Airlines Flight 1015 was leaving for Denver about 10 p.m. Sunday when it flew over a Boeing 747 cargo plane that had just landed on an intersecting runway.
No injuries were reported.
United’s Boeing 737 was carrying 120 passengers and five crew members, said Brandon Borr man, a spokesman for the Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based carrier.
“The flight departed safely,” he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which estimated that the planes came within 300 feet of each other, said in a statement that controller error was to blame for the incursion.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.
So far this year, five runway incursions have taken place at O’Hare out of approximately 540,000 total flights, the FAA said.
Seven such incursions occurred at O’Hare last year.
Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman for the city’s aviation department, says the incidents are rare, considering the airport handles roughly 1 million flights a year.
“This is abnormal,” she said.
