Things come in threes...



An air traffic controller noticed what was going on and instructed the Midwest Airlines pilot to stop just as an alarm sounded in the control tower, Gregor said.

"The controller saw what was happening and immediately took action to keep this incident from becoming more serious," Gregor said.

The Midwest Airlines jet stopped just before it entered the departures runway, about 200 feet past the taxiway's hold bars, according to Mike Foote, president of the local air traffic controllers union.

"This was a pretty nasty near-miss and I would say from my perspective that the planes were 10 to 15 feet from each
other," said Foote, who was inside the control tower during the runway incursion. "I just remember seeing the entire plane cross the hold bars and pull all the way up to the edge of the runway," Foote said. "The pilot probably looked down the runway and froze when he saw the other plane coming right at him." Gregor acknowledged that the planes came within 100 feet of each other, but said that the exact distance was still being calculated. "This was the first runway incursion of this kind" at LAX's south airfield since an $83 million centerline taxiway was built between the two runways, Gregor said