2 planes nearly collided after taking off from Houston's Bush Airport - KVUE [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

We're breaking down a near miss at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport that could have resulted in a major catastrophe. The FAA confirmed it happened back on December 18th as two commercial airliners departed on parallel runways.

According to a preliminary statement from the FAA, air traffic control instructed the Volaris flight to turn left,
but the pilots turned right toward the commuter airplane instead, coming within just hundreds of feet of each other laterally and vertically.

An aviation expert who spoke with our sister station in Houston says the passengers on those planes were very lucky. Two presumably packed airliners would have collided at low altitude and low speed, and it would have killed everybody on board both airplanes.

Our sister station reached out to both airlines involved in the incident. Commute Air told them its crew properly followed air traffic instructions. Volaris says it is cooperating with authorities in the ongoing investigation.