United Airlines Plane Narrowly Avoids Helicopter Collision

0:00It's March 27th. Welcome in. This is Durham News Today, where local news meets AI. A United Airlines flight had a close call with an Army National Guard helicopter while landing at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California on Tuesday evening. The Boeing 737 was coming in from San Francisco with 168 people on board when the Sikorski Black Hawk crossed its path around 8.40 pm. Pilots got a traffic alert from air traffic control and spotted the helicopter ahead. They leveled off right away, keeping a vertical separation of 525 feet and about a quarter mile sideways, both the plane and the helicopter landed without issues. No one was hurt, but the incident highlights ongoing air traffic worries. It happened just days after a deadly crash at LaGuardia Airport in New York and echoes last year's fatal mid-air collision near Washington, D.C. Killed 67. The helicopter was on a routine training flight back to base along an approved route in touch

1:02with controllers. The California National Guard plans a full review with other agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating, including a new rule from last week that bans visual separation between planes and helicopters. Near busy airports, switching to radar for safe or spacing, the National Transportation Safety Board is tracking it too, aiming to prevent any repeats.