and i m john berman. huge crowds at chick fill a s all across the country. they weigh in about the national debate about gay marriage and free speech. some people wanted a sandwich. another thrilling finish leads to gold for team u.s.a. this is cnn breaking news. breaking overnight a frighteningly close call in the skies. three commuter jets came within seconds of a mid-air collision. we re talk 12g seconds after confused air traffic controllers dealing with bad weather launched two flights at another plane that was coming in for another landing. the two closest plains were less than 1.5 miles apart and they were closing in at 400 miles an hour. they were operated by u.s. airways. they had a combined 192 people on board. listen to how it unfolded on the radio. 3329 stand by. hold on. we re trying to get a copy. stand by. okay, we really we ll get back to you as soon as i can. we ve got to get off the ground here pretty quick. everybody stand by, we ve got
fi five. we have to get on the ground pretty quick. everybody stand by. we have a couple of opposite direction arrivals. it is going to be a little delay on your departures. according to the washington post the federal official who reviewed the incident blamed a basic communication breakdown, blamed sloppy procedures and said it was a big screw up for a big airport. let s get right to athena jones live in washington, d.c. this morning. walk me through exactly what happened. you can hear the chaos in the radio transmission. what was at the root cause of it? good morning, soledad. you saw from that graphic, that s what it looked like. this happened just about after 2 p.m. tuesday. it was during a heavy rain storm, driving rain that cause the the air traffic controllers to want to change how planes were coming in and taking off. planes had been landing and departing on runway 1 going from south to north. they wanted to switch that in the rain. they wanted to switch i
breaking class ceilings at work. for now, i ll just say the key is the boss wife. we begin with the government trying to figure out why three planes at washington s reagan airport came close to crashing right into each other in mid-air. the incident occurred tuesday when air traffic controllers were making adjustments for landinand departing aircraft because of bad weather. athena jones at reagan national for us. so, how close of a call was this? good morning, kyra. it was a pretty close call. we re talking about seconds here. one of the airplane as was about half as far away as it should have been, the other one was a little bit further from that third plane. this all happened on otuesday afternoon after about 2:00 p.m. there was a heavy rain storm and air traffic controllers decided to change the direction of the planes were taking off and landing. they were taking off and landing on runway one and going from south to north and decide to take off and land on runway 19