American Airlines 737 Was Landing At Washington National — Then Pilots Saw A Regional Jet On Their Runway

At approximately 6:55 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at Washington’s National airport, two Republic-operated American Airlines regional flights with nearly identical callsigns were waiting at neighboring runways. The tower cleared flight 4702 onto Runway 4. Flight 4752 apparently accepted that clearance as its own and entered Runway 1, forcing an arriving American Airlines 737 to go around. “Tower, there’s an airplane on Runway 1.” “Brickyard 4702” is American Airlines flight 4702 operated by Republic Airways from Washington National to New York LaGuardia, waiting for runway 4. “Brickyard 4752” is American Airlines flight 4752 operated by Republic Airways from Washington National to Raleigh, waiting for runway 1. “American 3101” is American Airlines flight 3101 coming in to land on runway 1 from Dallas – Fort Worth. Aviation watchdog JonNYC flags the incident. “Heard it was 800’ vertical between the arrival and the aircraft that took the wrong call. That doesn’t seem *that bad* to me but again all second hand and I haven’t seen a replay” — JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 31, 2026 Here’s an air traffic control audio and playback of the flights: TOWER: Brickyard 4702, Washington Tower, Runway 4, line up and wait. Traffic departs, lands Runway 1. BRICKYARD 4702: Line up and wait, Brickyard 4702. TOWER: American 3101, traffic holds Runway 4. AMERICAN 3101: 3101. Tower, there’s an airplane on Runway 1. TOWER: Brickyard 4752, uh— [Brief overlapping or garbled transmission.] TOWER: American 3101, go around. Turn left heading 250, maintain 3,000—correction, 280, maintain 3,000. AMERICAN 3101: Uh, you were stepped on. Uh, I heard go around for American 3101, maintain 3,000, left turn. Say again the heading? TOWER: American 3101, turn left heading 280, maintain 3,000. AMERICAN 3101: Heading 280 and 3,000, American 3101. TOWER: Brickyard 4752, just continue holding Runway 1. You wasn’t given access to the runway. BRICKYARD 4752: Yeah, yeah, you told us line up and wait Runway 1, Brickyard 4752. TOWER: Brickyard 4752, that was for Brickyard 4702 on Runway 4. Just continue holding on Runway 1. BRICKYARD 4752: Continue hold Runway 1, Brickyard 4752. Air traffic control instructed Brickyard 4702 to line up and wait on Runway 4. Nevertheless, both Republic jets started moving – flight 4752 toward runway 1, and 4702 toward runway 4. American 3101 was told that traffic was holding on Runway 4. They expected that their landing runway, runway 1, was clear. However, they spotted the Republic Airways Embraer E175 on Runway 1 and air traffic control who sent them around. The Republic jet (4752) was told it had not been authorized onto runway 1. The crew replied that they believed they had received a line-up-and-wait clearance for Runway 1. Tower explained that the clearance had been for 4702 on Runway 4. Things got close between the aircraft, but not frighteningly so. At its lowest point of descent, American 3101 appears to have been about four-fifths of a mile from the runway and about 320 feet above the runway. So what happened here? It sounds like 4752 and 4702 both heard an instruction the same way, and a simultaneous readback of the instructions may have gotten garbled. But we don’t know that there were two aircraft transmitting at the same time just from the audio. Clearly, both crews accepted the same instruction. Brickyard 4752 began moving toward Runway 1 and five seconds later Brickyard 4702 began moving toward Runway 4. Both of them were moving after just one clearance from the tower. Maybe 4752’s readback of the instruction was blocked Maybe 4752 didn’t transmit back at all They could have heard enough of “Brickyard forty-seven…” to assume it was them, and simply heard their runway 1 instead of the clearly spoken Runway 4 instruction from the controller. It’s one of those situations where it really wasn’t the instruction from air traffic control that’s to blame, unlike several recent events. (Although in this case a pilot’s read back might also have included the runway assignment and clearance to enter or line up and wait. The two similar flight numbers on the same frequency at adjancent runways at the same time turned out to be problematic. Some critics are going to blame to volume of traffic at the airport – “runway 1 is too busy” – but this was caused by an unauthorized runway entry, not inadequate spacing between aircraft that are correctly cleared. Topics on this page