By Lori Aratani
A flight attendant was injured earlier this week after an Allegiant Air flight was forced to take evasive measures to avoid colliding with a private jet over Florida, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The FAA is investigating the incident, which took place on Sunday.
An air traffic controller in the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Centre had instructed the Allegiant flight - which had taken off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport - to turn eastbound at an altitude of 23 000 feet when the plane crossed in front of a northbound Gulfstream business jet.
Authorities said the pilot of Allegiant Air Flight 485 received an automated alert about another aircraft flying at the same altitude and moved to avoid a collision.
The pilot of the Gulfstream jet also took evasive action after receiving a similar alert.
The Allegiant flight, which was headed for Lexington, returned to the Fort Lauderdale airport, where a flight attendant was treated for injuries stemming from the incident, authorities said.
The FAA did not report that any passengers were injured.
The carrier referred all inquiries to the FAA. The National Transportation Safety Board said on Friday that it was still gathering information to determine whether it will launch an investigation into the incident.
A spate of near misses at airports earlier this year prompted the FAA and the NTSB to convene separate safety summits.
The FAA released data in May showing that such incidents had declined since January.
Even so, the nation's airports recorded nine near misses during the first four months of this year, compared with 18 during all of 2022.
The incidents included one in which a United Airlines Boeing 777 crossed a runway at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu while a small Cessna was landing.
Another close call took place Feb. 4 at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport after an air traffic controller cleared a FedEx cargo jet to land on a runway where a Southwest Airlines passenger flight had also been cleared to take off.
The planes came within 100 feet of one another, the NTSB has said.