On 11 January, Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) once again proved its worth, this time in a close call between two airliners approaching Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX | KPHX). A United Airlines 737 and Delta Air Lines A330 were both on approach to Phoenix, assigned to parallel runways. United flight 1724 was cleared for Runway 07R, Delta 1070 was cleared for Runway 08.
The aircraft were on a conflicting path and TCAS alerted both crews. United climbed, while Delta descended and the aircraft were de-conflicted. The closest lateral distance is at 17:58:53.7 UTC when the two aircraft are roughly 1,217 feet apart. At that time, they were 875 feet apart vertically.
Prior to that, United was descending toward the airport above Delta and began climbing again at 17:58:35.5 from a lowest altitude of 4,075. At the time United began climbing again the two aircraft were .793 miles apart laterally at 425 feet apart vertically.
After resequencing for the approach, both aircraft landed safely in Phoenix.
Downloadable data
There are three files available for each flight—standard CSV and KML files, which contain position information for the entirety of each flight, and a granular CSV file, which contains the raw data for the period including the TCAS alert.
You can review playback of these flights via Flightradar24 global playback here, or view individual playback for DL1070 here and UA1724 here.
