The Federal Aviation Administration has opened an investigation after a Frontier Airlines plane nearly collided with two trucks on a taxiway at Los Angeles International Airport.
No one was injured. In air traffic control audio, the pilot sounded shaken: “We just had two trucks cut us off. We had to slam on the brakes to not hit them.” The pilot later said, “It happened so fast… I have to go check on the flight attendants in the back. It was real close, closest I’ve ever seen.”
Frontier said the flight had 217 passengers and seven crew members and praised the pilots for their quick actions. LAX has not released information about who was driving the trucks. The aircraft was moving at low speed—about 15 mph—likely allowing the crew time to avoid a collision.
Brian Sinclair, a former F-18 pilot and current instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, said the incident likely occurred in a tower blind spot. “In this case, there are three specific locations at LAX that ground people in the tower cannot see the taxiways,” he said, noting the risk that creates.
Kris Van Cleave, senior transportation correspondent at CBS News, pointed out differences between this near-miss and last month’s crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport that killed two pilots. At LaGuardia, responding vehicles crossed an active runway under direct air traffic control at high speeds. By contrast, the LAX plane was taxiing slowly and no one was hurt.
Experts said the episode is a teachable moment. Sinclair observed that many aviation lessons come from tragic experience, calling this “a perfect example of a get-out-of-jail-free lesson learned” since nobody was injured and no equipment was damaged.