JetBlue passengers recount near collision

New York

TO her left, Kay Germano noticed a small silvery speck hurtling towards her plane. Maybe it was a bird, she thought, lost in the clouds. She paid it no heed.

But the dot grew larger. The Airbus A320 she was on banked hard to the right. A man in the third row, behind her, yelled "Oh my God!" followed by a string of expletives.

Ms Germano's five-year-old daughter, Sophia, was unnerved. "Why is the man screaming like that?" she asked. Ms Germano replied that he was excited about landing.

But the truth was not so innocuous. As JetBlue Airways Flight 94 approached Westchester County Airport on Sunday afternoon, travelling from Orlando, Florida, a small plane came closer, heading toward its left flank. If the pilots on the JetBlue flight had not swerved, some passengers believe, the two planes would have met in midair.

The near collision is now under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, which says that the smaller aircraft, which was not required to communicate with air traffic controllers, neared the JetBlue plane over Westchester County before both planes landed safely. A spokesman for JetBlue said that its pilots received a "traffic conflict warning" while they descended, but did not say how close the planes came to each other. That has not stopped speculation this week over who piloted the small plane.

"Unless the guy was blind or drunk, he was coming straight at us," said Pat Twomey, 66, who was in the last row of the plane. "Who was this person?

The tale began growing more cinematic from almost the moment the small plane slipped under the jet, Ms Germano, 42, said. The first time the passenger behind her told a flight attendant what he saw, he said that the other plane was 500 yards away. The next time, he claimed it was 100 yards. By the time their plane landed, he said that they had averted catastrophe by a margin of inches.

But Ms Twomey, who first told her story to WABC-TV on Thursday, said that the scene was as harrowing as any depicted in the movies.

"You could see the cars on the road, and then all of a sudden we were back up in the clouds," she said. "The wind made this horrible, scary sound." After the plane landed, the pilot told passengers that someone had been "joy riding" in their airspace, Ms Twomey and Ms Germano said. NYT