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Harrison Ford Needs to Stop Flying Planes

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 18: Harrison Ford attends "The Expendables 3" premiere during the 67th Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2014 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Harrison Ford is a certified pilot, which is nice for him, but is increasingly becoming a danger to the citizens of greater Los Angeles. Just two years ago, the 74-year-old actor made headlines for crashing a single-engine WWII-era plane into the middle of a Venice Beach golf course, hospitalizing himself. That wasn’t his first incident, either: In fact, there is an entire page on the website Air Safe (“Key information for air travelers”) dedicated to Ford’s checkered flying career. It recounts two other past flying incidents: Ford toppling a helicopter on its side while doing an emergency landing in Santa Clarita in 1999, and grazing a wing during takeoff in Nebraska in 2000.

In Ford’s past scrapes, no one except himself has been seriously hurt. But it seems like that’s getting increasingly closer to no longer being true. As The Hollywod Reporter reports, the actor–who was certified as a “Living Legend of Aviation” by the Experimental Aircraft Association, and has an award named after him–made a catastrophic error this morning at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.  The FAA is reportedly “investigating an incident” in which a private pilot illegally landed on a taxiway, instead of a runway, in the process just avoiding a Boeing 737 jet on the ground holding 110 passengers and six pilots. NBC News has identified Ford as the pilot in a new report, though the FAA has not confirmed any details.

“Was that airliner meant to be underneath me?” Ford reportedly asked air traffic controllers shortly after almost killing a huge group of people. NBC’s report claims that Ford read back the correct clearance to the air traffic controller just before landing his plane in exactly not that spot.

Ford did not hit the jet, and no one was hurt; nonetheless, the scenario sounds like Ford was doing method-acting training to star in a Flight sequel. Maybe he should take some of his own advice, eh?

 

Update: NBC News has obtained footage of the incident, and issued a new report. Watch below.

https://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/882316355858