a delta 747 and a smaller plane came within half a mile of each other. here s cnn s renee marsh. reporter: the incident happened here at new york s jfk airport. a shuttle america embraere-170 was taking off just as a delta 747 was preparing to land. that 747 then peeled out of its landing in a standard procedure called a missed approach. it is the latest in a string of near misses across the mags s airports in the past few years. last year in washington, d.c., at reagan national airport three planes barely avoided slamming into one another after a control tower miscommunication. and a frightening near multiple collision in denver. traffic one o clock less than two miles at same altitude. descend immediately. a passenger plane caught an radar steering directly into the line of several aircrafts. in 2010 a pilot at boston logan
we ve been in close contact with the faa this morning. and we re just pulling in this information this morning. they tell us they are just starting this investigation. and here s what we know so far. reporter: the incident happened here at new york s jfk airport. a shuttle america embraer e170 was taking off just as a delta 747 was preparing to land. that 747 then peeled out of its landing in a standard procedure called a missed approach. the two planes then came way too close. the faa will not confirm just how close. in a statement it said the two aircraft were turning away from each other at the point where they lost the required separation. both aircraft landed safely. it is the latest in a string of near-misses across the nation s airports in the past few years. last year in washington, d.c., at reagan national airport three planes barely avoided slamming
pilot acknowledging that he does indeed see the plane and was turning away. carol, the faa saying that they re investigating. here what happe here s what we know so far the. reporter: incident happened here at new york s jfk airport. a shuttle america em bray e-170 taking off just as the delta 747 was preparing to land. that 747 then peeled out of its landing in a standard procedure called a missed approach. the two planes then came way too close. the faa will not confirm how close. in a statement it said, the two aircraft were turning away from each other at the point where they lost the required separation. both aircraft landed safely. it is the latest in a string of near-misses across the nation s airports in the past few years. last year in washington, d.c., reagan national airport, three planes barely avoided slamming into one another after a control tower miscommunication.
doesn t want to land because it thinks it s not safe. it s told to veer off to the right here. here s what happens then. just behind it another jet comes, a delta 747. it encounters the same problem. so the tower tells this pilot instead to go to the left so that it won t interfere with the plane that went this way. that is key. when that happened, it ended up being pointed right at a shuttle that is taking off from laguardia airport here, that is what put these planes on to a collision course flying the exact same area. erin? when you say collision course, they they truly were. at the closest point, lou close were they? well, if you look at the closest point for these planes, the simple truth is that they were about separated by about 200 feet in here. about 2,000 feet in the air. they were separated by about 2 hundred feet in terms of their vertical distance.
renee marsh is joining us from washington. what are we hearing about the close call? do we have anymore information about how this happened? we know from the faa at the point these two aircrafts were very close, they were about a half a mile apart horizontally. keep in mind they are supposed to be no less than three miles apart. they were also 200 feet apart vertically. also keep in mind they should be at the very least 1,000 feet apart. that gives you a better idea as to how close these planes came. they were turning away from each other when they were at their closest point. we did pull in some audio, portion of audio between the delta 747 and the control tower. what you re about to hear is the control tower telling the pilot the direction and attitude of another plane coming his way.