All the usual authorities are investigating a May 13 incident at San Francisco International Airport in which a United A320 apparently turned in front of a SkyWest CRJ 200 while both were taking off from parallel runways. According to statement by one of the air traffic controllers working that afternoon that was sent to VASAviation, the United plane, which was taking off from Runway 1R, was supposed to turn right and the CRJ was supposed to turn left. Instead, the United plane made a sharp left almost directly into the path of the CRJ. The planes came within 0.4 nautical miles laterally and 200 feet vertically.
The regional crew ducked out of the way and slightly to the right instead of the left it should have made and a confused controller tried to get them separated and on the right routing. Meanwhile a Turkish Airlines wide-body was on approach and his initial requests for a landing clearance were ignored while the two incident planes were sorted out.
One of the commenters on an earlier story about ATC issues at EWR and ORD posited that it seemed the problems were only happening at United operating hubs. Well, SFA is also a United hub, so it seems the trend continues! Sounds like a United flight crew might have some 'splainin to do on this one. I suspect some controllers drank dinner after this one.
While ultimately the UA crew may shoulder the bulk of the blame for this, SFO has refined the concept of “Notmalization of Deviance” to its pinnacle by launching closely spaced parallel departures and a heavy reliance on visual procedures to keep their traffic rates up. Just like DCA, SFO jams operations in until it breaks and then everyone steps back and realizes how close to the edge they had been running all along.
Are slots the answer? Maybe.
See and avoid is a lot safer done at a distance.
Close call, glad everyone is safe. Just one small correction to make, you said the SkyWest airplane should have turned left, however they were in visual conditions, once United turned in front of them SkyWest became the overtaking aircraft, so they followed the correct procedure. In fact if you look closer at the ADSB record you can see that if SkyWest had turned left they would have been much closer to United for much longer.
It might be revealing to show the experience level of the UAL crew.
Captain Steeeve, on TikTok, had an interesting explanation. Apparently ATC switched runways on the United flight, but they didn’t update their FMS. Oops …