Southwest and Cessna: Dancing in the Danger Zone

Let’s just say I’m relieved we have pilots who know their maps from their menus. This latest aerial tango might have ended up as a jigsaw puzzle in the sky, but luckily, the Southwest pilots had their wits about them.

Van Nuys Tower’s Unenviable Juggling Act

The pros at VASAviation have scooped the audio from air traffic control and slapped it on some jazzy visuals, sketching out a harrowing near miss over Southern California on March 17, 2025. Our soaring stars?

• N610GD, the Cessna Citation Encore, on its theatric descent from Borger, Texas (BGD) to Van Nuys, California (VNY)
• Southwest’s flight artist, WN2961, a Boeing 737-700, making its stylish jaunt from Sacramento, California (SMF) to Burbank, California (BUR)

Picture this: Van Nuys and Burbank airports, just a stone’s throw apart at eight puny miles. Aircraft there are like kids sharing the same sandbox—a lot of crossing paths and throwing sand. On this fateful day, the weather had all the pleasantries of a concrete sky—just a touch too foggy for comfort.

Here’s the crux: the Cessna fell short of spotting the runway it was supposed to pucker down on and had to perform a go-around maneuver. Meanwhile, the Southwest 737 was in a nosedive towards Van Nuys, teetering on intrusion into the Cessna’s dance space. Lost aerial separation led to the inevitable buzzkill: a TCAS alarm blaring its unwelcome presence.

Check out the video below if you want some real heart-thumping stuff. TCAS alerts—sure, they’re not the unicorns of the aircraft world, but the unfolding spectacle of this one is pretty gripping.

Decoding the Mid-Air Mayhem

Hats off to the Southwest pilots—they were the proverbial ducks in a water race. But the Cessna Citation’s pilot and the air traffic controller? Let’s open that can of worms.

The Cessna chap seemed to have arrived out of an aviation theme party. Couldn’t see the runway? Understandable. But asking for vectors when told twice—count ’em, twice—that the runway’s practically in the front yard? Baffling.

It gets juicier: As he was babbling about vectors, he sneakily climbed altitude—uninvited—suggesting a missed approach that he didn’t bother whispering to anyone about. And let’s not even mention the airport’s missed approach sequence that he clearly mislaid in the pile of unread manuals.

As for the air traffic controller? Well, let’s just posit he dipped into a state of existential crisis right when he was on duty. Instructions grew sparse, the silence was loud, and one sincerely hopes his prowess lies shimmering elsewhere.

In Conclusion

The brush with potential catastrophe involving a Southwest 737 and Cessna Citation in Southern California ended with aviation sheepishly shaking its wings back to normalcy. Thanks to TCAS, many a near miss narrowly skids past becoming a headline maker.

Nevertheless, you can’t help but squirm slightly at the lackluster performance of both the Cessna’s pilot and the air traffic controller. What a bizarre symphony of errors.

Would you have handled this mid-air melodrama differently? While you ponder your answer, maybe a quick trip to Val Seny ski resort will help clear the mind.