The string of near-misses in U.S. airspace continues, this time involving a Southwest Airlines 737 and a fire department helicopter at Hollywood-Burbank Airport in southern California. Matthew Klint with liveandletsfly.com reported that “Southwest Airlines flight 353 was on approach for landing at BUR airport when Air Traffic Control noticed a Los Angeles Fire Department Bell 505 helicopter practicing takeoffs and landings, right where the Southwest flight was to land. The Southwest flight, a Boeing 737-700 with registration N551WN, was ordered to abort landing and performed a go-around.”
NBC Los Angeles reported that just before 10 a.m., the 737 from Phoenix was on approach to Runway 8 for a landing; it was about a mile out when air traffic control noticed the LAFD helicopter doing touch-and-go’s on the same runway. The controller told the helicopter to remain in place and directed the Southwest pilot to go around. Ed Whisenant Aviation has a related video online.
This is yet another incident at Burbank; on January 22 two aircraft were cleared to use the same runway at the same time (a Mesa Airlines CRJ900 operating for American Airlines and a SkyWest Embraer 175 operating for United Airlines). In that incident, an automatic alarm onboard the CRJ900 sounded, which may have prevented a tragedy.