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.
Air traffic control audio captured a visibly shaken pilot who said the trucks ‘cut us off’ and that the crew ‘had to slam on the brakes’ to avoid a crash. The pilot later said the event happened so quickly he needed to check on flight attendants and called it the closest he’d ever experienced.
Frontier confirmed the flight carried 217 passengers and seven crew members and praised the pilots for acting quickly. LAX officials have not released information about who was driving the trucks. Airport and airline accounts say the aircraft was taxiing at roughly 15 mph, a low speed that likely gave the crew time to stop.
Brian Sinclair, a former F-18 pilot and current instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, said the incident probably occurred in one of several tower blind spots at LAX. ‘There are three specific locations at LAX that ground controllers in the tower cannot see,’ he noted, warning that those gaps increase the chance of ground conflicts.
Kris Van Cleave, CBS News’ senior transportation correspondent, contrasted the near-miss with last month’s fatal LaGuardia crash, where emergency vehicles crossed an active runway at high speed under air traffic control and two pilots were killed. By contrast, the LAX event involved slow taxiing and no injuries.
Aviation experts called the episode a teachable moment. Sinclair described it as a rare opportunity to learn from a close call rather than from tragedy, underscoring the need to address tower visibility and ground-vehicle procedures to prevent future incidents.