Southwest Pilots Navigate Near-Disaster on Chicago Runway
Well, here we go again—another day, another narrowly averted headline-maker about planes playing too close for comfort. And we’d like to give a nod of thanks to our friends over at The Aviation Herald for putting this blip on our radars.
Close Encounters of the Runway Kind: Southwest Meets Private Jet
In today’s edition of “What the heck happened at Chicago Midway Airport?”—an incident unfolded on what started as a typical February Tuesday in 2025. You know, just a Southwest Boeing 737-800 (N8517F, if you’re wondering) coming in hot from Omaha, Nebraska, ready to make its grand touch on runway 31C.
- The Southwest beauty, flight WN2504, was right there, ready to glide down, when suddenly…
- In the other corner, a snooty Flexjet Bombardier Challenger 35, registration N560FX, was set to make a graceful exit to Knoxville, Tennessee, also minding its business on runway 22L, while sashaying across runway 31C.
But then plot twist! The Challenger 35, despite being given explicit instructions by air traffic controllers to stand still and behave like a good plane, decided otherwise. As the Southwest beauty was mid-flare, the Bombardier decided checking for traffic was so last season and waltzed right across 31C.
Thankfully, those Southwest pilots showed us all what professional cool looks like and executed a last-second go-around maneuver, practically sniffing the tarmac. Meanwhile, the Bombardier pilots got themselves a shiny new phone number to call for what the suits call “pilot deviation.”
What Ads-B Data Revealed About the Close Shave
Anyway, data shows us that the 737 was barely skimming runway kisses, just shy of 1,600 feet from a well-placed disaster camouflaged as a taxiing jet. When the two aircraft should’ve met, they missed one another with the 737 soaring an impressive 150 feet above fate.
As our Southwest hero plane climbed away, you can hear in the cockpit recording the befuddled pilot’s voice reaching out to air traffic control: “Um, how in the world did that happen?” Not that anyone’s answering right then and there, because safety first, we’ll chat later.
If you’re still scratching your head (and we are too), there’s a video gem of this near miss created by VASAviation. Let’s just say, the Flexjet communication log pretty much served everyone a big slice of how-not-to.
The Heroics of Southwest’s Sharp-Eyed Pilots
This scare naturally got the Federal Aviation Administration on the case. Initial guesses point the awkward finger of blame at the Bombardier pilots for ignoring air traffic control’s crystal-clear orders. So why’d they do it, and just how foggy was their communication?
Really, you have to ask—what could possibly be going on in the Challenger cockpit? When you’re playing chess with planes on a runway, you double, no, triple-check your clearance numbers and your short-final visual queue. Period.
Our hats off to the Southwest pros dodging disaster, navigating the mix-ups with poise, including:
- Realizing in the thick of landing whether another plane pulled a fast one past the “hold short” line—time’s ticking, every heartbeat counts.
- Dealing with the flare when the nose angles up, hampering vision straight down the runway’s throat.
Cheers to these aviation maestros for keeping it together, proving once more that such split-second brilliance draws the line between heart-in-throat close calls and true catastrophe.
Final Thought: This Airport Drama Unfolds
In today’s episode of “Airline Drama at Chicago Midway,” starring one Southwest Boeing 737 and a Flexjet Bombardier Challenger 35, we saw a potential heart-stopper. Expecting to touch back down on Earth, the Southwest crew saw the crossed signals and stepped up to prevent disaster when Flexjet dropped the ball.
If you’ve got thoughts on this too-close-for-comfort runway wrangle, we’d love to hear them!
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