An air traffic controller instructed a Southwest Airlines jet to abort its takeoff on Thursday after it began to accelerate on a taxiway instead of a runway at Orlando International Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed to Business Insider that the event took place at around 9:30 a.m. local time as the plane prepared to head to Albany, New York.
Southwest said "the crew mistook the surface for the nearby runway." A different plane later operated the flight.
The Orlando airport has two parallel taxiways between the terminal and the runway where the plane was meant to take off. Taxiways are used to navigate around airports, including to and from runways, and have specific markings, including yellow markings versus white markings on runways.
The aircraft appears to have mistakenly accelerated on Taxiway H, which runs parallel to Runway 17R. It reached 70 knots before slowing down.
According to weather reports, conditions were largely clear, with no rain or fog during the event, which occurred during daylight hours.
The FAA said no other aircraft was involved in the incident and that it is investigating.
The event is reminiscent of an Air Canada flight that nearly landed on a taxiway in San Francisco in 2017.
In that incident, ATC told the pilots to abort their landing, and the plane pulled up just in time — coming within feet of the fully loaded passenger airliners lined up on the taxiway.
Another close call in a string of recent incidents and crashes
While the Southwest event doesn't appear as dire as the one in 2017, it comes after a string of recent near-misses and air crashes that have stoked travelers' fears and heightened awareness of air safety.
In late February, a Southwest plane nearly collided with a private jet at Chicago Midway Airport. The Southwest pilots avoided the crash by conducting a go-around before landing.
In mid-February, a Delta Air Lines plane crash-landed in Toronto and flipped upside down. That followed the American Airlines midair collision over Washington, DC, in January.
A preliminary report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada published on Thursday says the Delta plane was descending quickly and that its landing flare was lower than required by the aircraft's manual.
The NTSB said factors in the DC crash included the design of helicopter flight paths around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, air traffic control communication, and the helicopter flying too high at the time of impact.
Both incidents are still under investigation.
