U.S. safety board subpoenas American Airlines flight crew in NYC near miss

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Friday it had issued subpoenas to the flight crew of an American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) plane involved in a near collision on a runway at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport last month.

A Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) Boeing (NYSE:BA) 737-900 plane came to a safe stop on Jan. 13 after air traffic controllers noticed an American Airlines Boeing 777 had crossed from an adjacent taxiway.

The NTSB said the London-bound American Airlines flight crossed the runway without clearance from air traffic control, forcing the Delta aircraft to abort its takeoff.

The Delta flight, bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, aborted takeoff and came to stop about 500 feet short of the taxiway. At their closest, the two aircraft within 1,400 feet of each other.

The NTSB said it has attempted to interview the American Airlines flight crew three different times, but the crew refused to be interviewed on the basis that their statements would be recorded for transcription.

The NTSB said the cockpit voice recording from the incident in both planes were overwritten and not recovered. Cockpit voice recorders will automatically overwrite a recording after two hours unless a decision has been made to retain it.

The NTSB defended the request for the recorded interviews saying “the transcripts of each flight crew member’s account of the activities and conversation leading up to the runway incursion is particularly important in the absence of a cockpit voice recording.”

American Airlines said in an email to Reuters it was cooperating with the NTSB investigation and added “the safety of our customers and team members is our top priority.”

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents 15,000 American Airlines pilots, said in a statement it raised concerns over the NTSB’s “recent insistence” on electronically recording crew interviews.

“We firmly believe the introduction of electronic recording devices into witness interviews is more likely to hinder the investigation process than it is to improve it,” the union said.

There were 12 crew and 137 passengers on the American Airlines flight and six crew and 153 passengers on the Delta flight.