LAS VEGAS — A Southwest Airlines jet heading to Las Vegas from Southern California took a dramatic plunge shortly after takeoff Friday in response to an alert about a nearby plane, injuring two flight attendants, authorities and passengers said.
Southwest flight 1496 was responding to an onboard alert about another aircraft in its vicinity, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The FAA is investigating.
The crew responded to two air alerts that required the pilot to climb then descend, Southwest said in a statement. The flight departed from Hollywood Burbank Airport just before noon.
Passengers posted on social media that the plane took a dramatic drop soon after takeoff. Data from the flight tracking site FlightAware shows it dropped roughly 300 feet in 36 seconds.
“Pilot said his collision warning went off & he needed to avoid plane coming at us,” comedian Jimmy Dore posted on X.
The plane was in the same airspace near Burbank as a Hawker Hunter Mk. 58 just after noon local time, FlightAware shows. A Hawker Hunter is a British fighter plane. Records show it’s owned by Hawker Hunter Aviation Ltd, a British defense contracting company. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Mike Christensen, an airport spokesman for Hollywood Burbank, said that neither the control tower nor the operations department, which tracks planes departing and arriving, has any record of the Southwest flight plunging in their airspace.
Southwest said the flight continued to Las Vegas, “where it landed uneventfully.” The airline said that it is working with the FAA “to further understand the circumstances” of the event.
This close call is just the latest incident to raise questions about aviation safety in the wake of January’s midair collision over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.
By RIO YAMAT, The Associated Press
