Two overcrowded planes nearly collided on the runway at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

Officials are investigating a collision at a New York airport Friday night between a plane that was crossing the runway and another preparing to take off. CBS New York reports that both planes were “full of passengers”.

“(Swearing)! Delta 1943, take off clearance! Delta 1943, take off clearance!” an air traffic controller said in an audio recording of an air traffic control conversation when he noticed another plane operated by American Airlines crossing the road ahead. The entry was made by LiveATC, a website that tracks and publishes flight reports.

CBS New York said panic was heard in the air traffic controller’s voice.

A departing Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 then made a safe stop on the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport, while another plane crossed the road around 8:45 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

According to CBS New York, the Delta plane with 145 passengers and six crew members on board was bound for the Dominican Republic. 137 passengers and 14 crew members of the American Boeing 777 flew to the UK.

The Delta plane came to a halt about 1,000 feet from where the American Airlines plane crossed a nearby taxiway, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The plane returned to the boarding gate, where 145 passengers disembarked and were provided with overnight accommodation, a Delta spokesman said. The flight to Santa Domingo Airport in the Dominican Republic took off on Saturday morning.

Brian Hill, a passenger on the Delta flight, said he initially thought the sudden stop was a mechanical problem.

“There was such a sharp jerk of the plane, and everyone seemed to be pushed forward from the waist,” he recalled. “There was a reaction to braking, like a sigh. And then there was complete silence for a couple of seconds.

Hill, who was traveling with his husband during their winter break, said it wasn’t until the next day, when he was browsing Twitter, that he realized the seriousness of what could have happened on that airstrip.

“The pilot made a call to share information only when necessary, and it was absolutely the right call, because it would be a pandemonium,” he said.

John Cox, a retired pilot and professor of aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said he thought the controller “made a good call to divert the takeoff.”

He said the rejected takeoff safety maneuver, where pilots stop the plane and abort the takeoff, is one they are “very, very familiar with.”

“Pilots practice a rejected takeoff almost every time they get to the simulator,” he said.

On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would investigate.

The National Transportation Safety Board also said it was investigating the case.

“They will go back and listen to every transmission between the US aircraft and air traffic control to see who got it wrong,” Cox said.

Delta said in a statement that it “will be working with the aviation authorities and assisting them in their full review of Flight 1943 on January 13th regarding the successful abort of the New York-JFK takeoff procedure. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and the delay in their journey.”

American Airlines did not comment on the incident and said it would defer all questions to the FAA.

The worst air disaster in history involved a collision between Pan Am and KLM aircraft on a Tenerife airstrip in the Spanish Canary Islands in the late 1970s, killing 583 people on both aircraft.

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