About that near miss at Philadelphia International Airport…

A pilot who mistaken lined up with a taxiway instead of a runway nearly caused his or her small plane to collide with four passenger jets that were on the taxiway, according to a preliminary report on the incident by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

One-tenth of a mile

The Aug. 10, 2018, incident involved a Gulfstream IV airplane with four passengers and three crewmembers aboard that was operated by Pegasus Elite Aviation as a charter flight. The flight was on a visual approach and cleared to land on runway 35 at about 8:50 p.m. on the incident date. During the approach the airplane aligned instead with taxiway E and when about one-tenth of a mile from the end of the taxiway, the pilot initiated a go-around.

On taxiway E were four air carrier passenger jets. Preliminary estimates indicate PEGJET flight 19 overflew the first jet (an Embraer ERJ-145) by about 200 feet and then overflew an Embraer ERJ-175, a Canadair CRJ-700 and another Embraer ERJ-145.

There were no injuries and none of the aircraft were damaged.

Cockpit voice recorder overwritten

The FAA reported the incident to the NTSB Aug. 11, and the NTSB initiated its investigation the same day. The cockpit voice recorder had already been overwritten. The flight data recorder was pulled from the airplane and sent to the NTSB laboratory for download and analysis.

NTSB preliminary reports do not provide probable cause and do not contain any analysis or findings, rather they only detail facts the agency has been able to verify at this point of the investigation. Information in preliminary reports is subject to change as more information becomes available throughout the course of the investigation. As such, no conclusions about the cause of the incident should be drawn from the information in the preliminary report.