The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating an incident where a Southwest Airlines plane possibly veered off course during a landing attempt at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport.

The plane reportedly came extremely close to colliding with the air traffic control tower.

According to CBS News, the plane may have flown over the tower with as little as 67 feet of clearance.

CBS News reports:

The incident occurred around 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 23, when pilots of Southwest Flight 147 aborted their first approach because of bad weather. While on final approach of their second landing attempt, an air traffic controller is heard urgently telling the pilots of the Boeing 737 to “go around” and climb to 2,000 feet.

“Go around! Go around!” Fly runway heading, climb and maintain 2,000. Climb and maintain 2,000. 2,000,” the air traffic controller said, according to a feed from liveatc.net.

The plane had apparently drifted to the east and was no longer lined up with the runway. Preliminary flight tracking data from Flightradar24 put the airliner at an altitude of 300 feet when it began to climb. The FAA said it’s investigating to see if the off-course airliner flew over the 233-foot tall air traffic control tower.

Flightradar24’s flight tracker map put the plane over the terminal building, not the runway. It appears the plane flew over the parking garage immediately adjacent to the air traffic control tower, based on Flightradar24’s approximate track.

The same controller told the pilots a few minutes later their plane, “was not aligned with the runway at all. It was like east of final. He was not gonna land on the runway.”

The airline said 147 passengers and six crew members were on board the flight from Nashville.

Per FOX Business:

Southwest told FOX Business that the flight had encountered “turbulence and low visibility” at the airport.

The flight diverted and landed in Baltimore.

The FAA told FOX Business in a statement that it “is investigating and will determine if the aircraft flew over the tower at LaGuardia.”

Separately, the airline said it is “reviewing the event as part of our safety systems.”

A go‐around occurs when an arriving aircraft aborts its landing procedure and returns to the landing queue, according to the San Francisco International Airport.

According to the FAA airplane flying handbook, “if there is a doubt over the landing surface, the pilot should go around and consider the situation further.”

A similar incident happened last week when a Newark-bound United Airlines flight was diverted to New York Stewart International Airport on Friday after experiencing high winds and ‘extreme turbulence.’

JUST IN: ‘Extreme Turbulence’ Causes United Airlines Flight To Make Emergency Landing, Multiple Individuals Taken To Hospital

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