The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a near miss between a military helicopter and a United Airlines flight.
The incident happened as the plane was approaching the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, CNN reported.
The US Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk passed in front of Flight 589, which was landing at John Wayne Airport from San Francisco on the evening of March 24.
There were 162 passengers and six crew members on the United Airlines flight, The New York Times reported.
The plane’s collision avoidance alarm went off and they stopped descending, leveling off until they were past the helicopter, which was on a routine training mission and was on the way back to base.
United Airlines said that air traffic controllers had advised the Flight 589 pilots of a military helicopter flying near the airport and the pilots saw the chopper.
The California National Guard released a statement to CNN, which read, “The aircraft was returning to Los Alamitos airfield along an established Visual Flight Rules (VFR) route at an assigned altitude while in communication with air traffic control," adding, “A thorough review will be conducted in coordination with the appropriate agencies.”
The FAA had suspended the use of visual separation between planes and helicopters near busy airports, according to The New York Times. The agency was determining if visual separation was used, according to the newspaper. Visual separation allows helicopter and smaller aircraft pilots to make their own way through crowded skies to help reduce the work of air traffic control, but pilots had to take it upon themselves to avoid collisions, using only what they could see.
The suspension of the practice came more than a year after a deadly collision between an American Airlines flight and a helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
Sixty-seven people died in the 2025 collision, NBC News reported.
The helicopter and the passenger jet were 525 feet apart vertically during this latest incident and 1,422 feet apart laterally when they were the closest, CNN reported, citing FlightRadar24 data.
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