Two passenger jets came perilously close to a midair collision, passing within 350 feet of one another as they attempted to land at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on Monday afternoon.

Audio recordings from ATC.com of exchanges between pilots and air traffic control corroborated the radar data. "You are flying through the approach course of runway 31 left. Correct immediately," the controller instructed the Republic pilots.

"Jazz 554 climb and maintain 3,000 (feet)," a separate controller ordered, directing the aircraft to alter its course. "The traffic on your left is overshooting the parallel."

Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 revealed that an American Airlines-operated aircraft and an Air Canada-operated aircraft came alarmingly close to one another as they made their approach to the runway.

Republic Airways Flight 4464 "performed a go-around" shortly after 2:30 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration, cutting directly into the path of Jazz Aviation Flight 554 as both aircraft tried to land.

Data from FlightRadar24 indicated that the Republic aircraft rapidly descended approximately 600 feet within seconds while passing over Long Beach. At the same time, the tracking service recorded the Jazz jet climbing by nearly 1,000 feet.

The FAA praised both flight crews for reacting promptly and taking appropriate action, successfully averting what could have been a catastrophic collision. Republic Airways, which was operating the flight on behalf of American Airlines, confirmed that the pilots "received a resolution advisory," an anti-collision alert issued by the aircraft's Traffic Collision Avoidance System.

Both aircraft landed safely at approximately 3pm. The FAA has launched an investigation into the incident.

This follows an incident on Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee, where two Southwest Airlines planes were forced to take evasive action to prevent a collision after an air traffic controller instructed one pilot to turn into the path of the other aircraft.

Last year, an American Airlines jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people on board both aircraft. That crash on 29 January 2025 brought renewed attention to midair collisions, which remain uncommon in commercial aviation where aircraft are fitted with systems designed to alert pilots of potential collisions.

The majority of close calls that occur annually involve smaller aircraft that lack such systems, though the Federal Aviation Administration could not immediately provide figures for how many take place each year. There are typically several collisions involving small planes annually, such as the incident that occurred in February 2025 in Arizona which killed two people.