Airliner Dodges Snowplow

The NTSB is investigating a 2nd February early evening incident where a United Airlines flight (#1193) was forced to use maximum braking and full reverse thrust in order to stop short of a snowplow clearing runway 26 at Denver International Airport. The 737 aircraft, with 101 people aboard, was arriving from Billings Montana. The miss distance is assessed as being around 200 feet. Despite being escorted by an airport operations vehicle, the two airport vehicles had become separated, with the escort vehicle already being clear of the runway. It's not clear yet whether the snowplow driver had his own communications with ATC. Investigator Arnold Scott will be taking statements from all participants in the incident and reviewing ATC Tower tapes and surface movement area radar data. The NTSB will be analyzing the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to correlate and ascertain a timeline of events.
Almost a month earlier there had been another runway incursion at Denver when a Frontier Airlines aircraft had to go around because of another aircraft on its landing runway. The miss distance, in that 05 January incident involving a Key Lime MetroLiner, was assessed as being a mere 50 feet.
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