Two Southwest Airlines flight attendants are being treated for injuries after a passenger jet heading to Las Vegas from southern California took a dramatic plunge shortly after takeoff on Friday, the airline and passengers said.
Southwest flight 1496, headed from Burbank to Las Vegas, received two alerts that made the plane climb and then descend, according to a statement from Southwest.
Reported by ABC and according to flight trackers FlightRadar24 and AirNavRadar, the plane avoided a collision with a Hawker Hunter jet, currently registered to a “Non-Citizen Corporation”, according to FAA registration logs.
Southwest said that the flight continued to Las Vegas, where it landed “uneventfully”, and that the airline is working with the FAA to “further understand the circumstances of the event”.
“We are aware of an incident involving Southwest Airlines flight 1496. The FAA is in contact with Southwest and we are investigating. Ensuring the safety of everyone in the national airspace system remains our top priority,” the FAA said in a statement.
A post on social media showed the path that the two planes took in a simulation video.
The good news is your 737 got an automated alert, your crew did what they were supposed to do and so your aircraft didn't get dangerously close to the other (a Hawker Hunter jet fighter registered to a defense contractor). pic.twitter.com/Ge7WwOifWu
— John Wiseman (@lemonodor) July 25, 2025
A passenger, Caitlin Burdi, likened the experience to the “Tower of Terror” theme park ride during an interview with Fox News.
“About 10 minutes into the flight, we plummeted pretty far, and I looked around, and everyone was like, ‘OK, that’s normal,’” Burdi told Fox. “Then, within two seconds, it felt like the ride Tower of Terror, where we fell 20 to 30 feet in the air. The screaming, it was terrifying. We really thought we were plummeting to a plane crash.”
YouTube personality Jimmy Dore posted on social media from the flight.
“Myself and plenty of people flew out of their seats and bumped heads on ceiling, a flight attendant needed medical attention,” Dore wrote. “Pilot said his collision warning went off and he needed to avoid plane coming at us.”
This was at least the second near-miss for a midair collision in the US this week, after a Delta plane headed from Minneapolis to Minot, North Dakota, nearly collided with a B-52 bomber.
In March, a passenger jet nearly collided with a military plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, where a collision between an American Airlines flight and a military helicopter had killed at least 67 people just months before.
