The alarm rang in the cockpit of Southwest Airlines flight 1496 right after the plane took off from Hollywood Burbank Airport near Los Angeles on July 25, forcing the pilot to steer the plane away.
The flight involved in the incident was a Boeing 737. The plane took off at noon, on a short flight to Las Vegas.
After less than 6 minutes in the air, a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet cut across the airline's route at a distance of 3.2km and at an altitude of less than 100m from the passenger plane, according to data from Flightradar24.
"At first, there was a small fall that I thought was a very strong stir. And then there was a long free fall," said passenger Stevelase Uwicz. He said that passengers were scared, screaming and chaos occurred in the cabin. At that time, this passenger thought the plane was Plug-in and had a technical problem.
Finally, the pilots turned on the internal communication system and informed passengers about controlling the plane to avoid a collision in the air.
Southwest Flight 1496 crew responded to two air warnings on the afternoon of July 25, requiring them to increase and decrease their altitude to comply with the warnings. Southwest is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to learn more about this situation," said Lynn Lunsford, a Southwest spokesperson.
The fighter jet in the incident was flying from El Paso, Texas to Venture County Airport in Oxnard, California.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating. It is not yet clear whether the two aircraft were allowed to fly too close to each other or one of the two aircraft was in an unauthorized position.
According to Flightradar24, when the alarm rang, the Southwest plane dropped about 145m in altitude and flew back about 182m for about 1 minute. The fighter jet flew about 30m in just a few seconds.
The airline said that two flight attendants of the airline are being treated for injuries and that no passengers were injured.
The passenger plane did not declare a state of emergency and continued a 39-minute flight to Las Vegas, landing about 9 minutes earlier than expected.
Most commercial aircraft are equipped with a Traffic Alert and Control System (TCAS), which can instruct pilots to increase or decrease altitude to avoid colliding too close to other aircraft.
TCAS operates independently with ground air traffic control, searching for nearby activities using radio frequencies from air Transmitters on other aircraft.
