The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Friday it had issued subpoenas to the flight crew of an American Airlines plane involved in a near collision on a runway at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport last month. A Delta Air Lines Boeing 737-900 plane came to a safe stop on Jan. 13 after air traffic controllers noticed an American Airlines Boeing 777 had crossed from an adjacent taxiway. The NTSB said the London-bound American Airlines flight crossed the runway without clearance from air traffic control, forcing the Delta aircraft to abort its takeoff. The Delta flight, bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, aborted takeoff and came to stop about 500 feet short of the taxiway. At their closest, the two aircraft within 1,400 feet of each other. The NTSB said it has attempted to interview the American Airlines flight crew three different times, but the crew refused to be interviewed on the basis that their statements would be recorded for transcription. The NTSB said the cockpit voice recording from the incident in both planes were overwritten and not recovered. Cockpit voice recorders will automatically overwrite a recording after two hours unless a decision has been made to retain it. The NTSB defended the request for the recorded interviews saying “the transcripts of each flight crew member’s account of the activities and conversation leading up to the runway incursion is particularly important in the absence of a cockpit voice recording.” American Airlines said in an email to Reuters it was cooperating with the NTSB investigation and added “the safety of our customers and team members is our top priority.”<br/>
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An airline jet being towed on a taxiway collided with a shuttle bus at Los Angeles International Airport late Friday, injuring five people. The FAA said Saturday that it is investigating the incident involving an American Airlines Airbus A321 jet. There were no passengers on board. The airport said on Twitter that the jet was being towed from a gate to a parking area when it “made contact” with a shuttle bus that was transporting passengers between terminals. The Los Angeles Fire Department said four people were taken to hospitals after the “low-speed collision,” which occurred around 10 p.m. The driver of the tug pulling the plane was in moderate condition and the driver and two passengers on the bus were in fair condition, the department said. The only person on the plane, a worker, was treated but declined to be taken to a hospital, according to the fire department. There was no interruption to airport operations, the airport said.<br/>