Following the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International airport, U.S. aviation officials will no longer allow foreign airlines to land alongside another plane when touching down at the airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that it made this change to "to minimize distractions during a critical phase of flight," the Associated Press reports.
Before the new rules, two planes were allowed to approach the airport's main parallel runways at the same time under good weather conditions. Domestic carriers will still be allowed to do this, but air traffic controllers will now longer
allow foreign carriers to do the same.
The FAA implemented this rule on Sunday. They also started advising foreign airline to use a GPS system instead of visual cues when landing at the San Francisco airport as the agency noticed an increase in aborted landings of foreign planes using visual approaches.
The pilots of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 were cleared for a visual approach on July 6, when the plane crash-landed, killing three and injuring 180 more passengers out of the 307 that were on board.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause, but the plane came in too low and too slow when it slammed its landing feat into a seawall, instead of touching down on the runway.
The pilot tried to request aborting the landing and circling the airport just a few seconds before the accident. The FAA said aborted landings occur at least once a day at busy airports for different reasons.
Another Asiana Airlines flight aborted its landing at San Francisco airport just two weeks after the crash of flight 214. A Taiwanese EVA Air flight aborted its landing after they approached too low last week.
There haven't been any major delays due to the change in allowing foreign planes to approach side-by-side.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
