Harrison Ford sounded confused before airport near-miss and 'wrongly told air traffic control he was flying a helicopter instead of a plane'
- Harrison Ford fumbled through his call to air traffic control before his near miss with a Boeing 737 on Monday
- He suggested to the tower that he was flying a helicopter instead of a plane
- He was also told that he was speaking to the wrong air traffic control tower
- Just 18 minutes later, a witness claims he 'completely misjudged the runway' while landing at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California
- The FAA said Wednesday Ford's investigation was on hold due to a backlog
- Star Wars actor has been in a number of crashes in his vintage aircraft over the years, most recently in 2015
Harrison Ford fumbled through his radio calls to air traffic control in the minutes leading up to his near crash-landing in California, earlier this week, suggesting to the control tower that he was flying a helicopter instead of a plane.
Audio of a call he made to the control tower on Monday has emerged, which sees the 74-year-old confusing his aircraft's tail number and communicating with the wrong tower.
Eighteen minutes after the call, Ford was involved in a near miss with an Boeing 737 American Airlines jet when he mistakenly landed on the taxiway at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.
Ford's conversation with air traffic control as he took off from Santa Monica Airport - just under 50 miles from his destination - sounds jumbled.
The SMO tower sends him off with his tail number, 'Husky Eight Niner Hotel Uniform', and a personal code of 0214.
Ford radios back to a tower - which turns out to be the wrong tower - reading off his tail number, during with he misspeaks several times.
It's unclear if he says 'I'm in a helicopter' or 'I'm an LA helicopter' in the audio obtained by TMZ.
Harrison Ford fumbled through his call to air traffic control before his near miss with a Boeing 737 on Monday
But he tells the tower: 'I'm an LA Helicopter, sorry, LA Heli - helicopter, sorry Husky Eight Niner Hotel Uniform.'
'2,600 descending 2,500 over Santa Monica,' Ford, who was in a serious plane crash in 2015 but has been described by several airports as an excellent pilot, adds.
The Santa Monica Tower controller, however, tells he should be speaking with an LA controller and gives him a new frequency code.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TMZ they will investigate but the probe has been put on hold due to a case backlog, leaving him free to fly for the foreseeable future.
A witness who saw the Star Wars actor's harrowing miss at John Wayne on Monday claimed that Ford had 'completely misjudged the runway'.
The man told the gossip site he was looking out of the windows at the terminal, while waiting for a friend, when he saw Ford's single-engine Husky plane coming in to land.
He described the plane as looking totally out of position and like it was about to crash after Ford 'completely misjudged the runway'.
Moments before the plane hit the ground, Ford 'banked really sharp' and 'hit hard' on the adjacent taxiway, according to the witness who also snapped a photo of the landing.
The claims, which seems to infer that the Indiana Jones star had initially been aiming for the runway, differs from earlier reports which stated that the 74-year-old had simply mistaken the taxiway for the parallel runway.
The runway is marked by a huge '20-L' in white paint at one end.
Ford mistakenly aimed for the unmarked taxiway instead of runway 20-L, just passing over an American Airlines 737 loaded with more than 100 passengers. The 737 was waiting to use runway 20-R on the other side of 20-L
Ford's mistake saw his plane just pass over the American Airlines 737, carrying more than 100 passengers, which was waiting to use nearby 20-R.
'Was that airliner meant to be underneath me?' he asked Air Control.
The FAA say that controllers had given Ford clear instructions to land on the runway, as landing on a taxiway is a safety violation.
They say the actor read the instructions back yet still somehow ended up aiming for the taxiway.
The weather conditions were a little cloudy but the runway was visible to Ford, TMZ said. The actor - who will next appear in the sci-fi sequel Blade Runner 2049 this year - passed a pilot's medical exam last month.
Flight 1546 was still able to take off for Dallas just minutes after the incident, NBC News reports.
Ford's reps had no official comment on the incident. Three days later, Ford was back in the cockpit of a plane.
The 74-year-old actor, who looked well dressed in dark jeans, sunglasses, a blazer and shirt, was spotted boarding a green Cessna Citation Sovereign 680 at Santa Monica Airport with his copilot before the pair jetted off together, on Thursday morning.
Ford, a vintage plane collector, has been involved in a number of crashes over the years.
Most famously, in 2015 he crash-landed a World War II-era airplane after the engine failed. The aircraft plummeted into a Santa Monica golf course during the crash in which Ford suffered head injuries and a broken arm.
But Ford was actually praised for keeping his cool and managing to glide his airplane into the crash landing.
Moments before the crash, in audio of his conversation with air traffic control, an unemotional Ford was heard asking for an emergency landing because his engine had failed.
Monday's near miss comes two years after he crashed his plane into a golf course, breaking his arm. Pictured above is Ford with his wife, Calista Flockhart, in December 2015
He said he was not going to be able to make the runway at Santa Monica Airport so he picked a long green at the nearby Penmar golf course to land out of the way of the congested neighborhood.
After plunging 3,000ft and hitting a tree on the way down, Ford was rushed from the scene bleeding heavily from a head wound.
Ford's publicist Ina Treciokas said the actor had no other choice but to make an emergency landing.
'Harrison's been a great pilot. You can see by the fact that he survived this forced landing that he is a skilled aviator,' Paul Mitton, who produced a documentary about Ford's love of flying, told CNN.
He also crash-landed a helicopter in 1999 and was forced to perform an emergency landing the following year in a Beechcraft Bonanza at Nebraska's Lincoln Municipal Airport.
The accident-prone actor has also injured himself on the ground too. While filming 'Star Wars: Episode VII', the door of Solo's Millennium Falcon spacecraft fell and broke the actor's leg.
He discovered a passion for flying somewhat late in life but Ford embraced it with gusto and flew his collection of planes as much as he drove his collection of vintage cars.
The actor was 52 when he started taking flying lessons and over the years the Indiana Jones star has amassed an impressive aviation collection.
He keeps the aircraft at the Santa Monica Airport which is where he was where he had taken off from in his two-seater PT- 22 shortly before he crashed on a nearby Venice golf course in 2015.
Now 74, Ford would be too old to fly a commercial aircraft who have a mandatory retirement age of 65.
The actor, who was in a serious plane crash in 2015, had been instructed to land on runway 20-L at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California (pictured is the damaged remains of his plane from his 2015 crash)
However, the FAA have no age limit on private pilots. The only additional requirement is that pilots above the age of 40 must pass medical exams every two years instead of every five.
Ford has a long range jet, a Citation Sovereign, a turboprop aircraft capable of operating on unimproved airstrips; and a de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver single engine bush plane.
He also has a 1929 Waco Taperwing open-top biplane, an Aviat Husky, which is a two-seat fabric-covered bush plane, and a Bell 407 helicopter.
In 1999, Ford was flying his helicopter along the Lake Piru riverbed, north-east of Los Angeles, when it went down in a hard landing during a training session.
Neither the actor nor his instructor were hurt although the helicopter was severely damaged.
He later said the incident gave him the opportunity to buy a new helicopter.
He once described crashing a plane as being like scraping a bumper and said he used his planes as much he used his cars.
'I'm so passionate about flying, I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger,' he said in 2010.
The Hollywood star often flies to and from his ranch in Wyoming and has used his helicopter there to aid Search and Rescue crews locate missing hikers.
With his need for speed, Ford collects vintage cars and motorbikes,
He has about a dozen motorcycles including several BMWs, a couple of Harleys, Hondas and a Triumph.
He has vintage cars too including a rare 1955 forest green convertible Jaguar XK 140 worth about $150,000.
Ford is married to actress Calista Flockhart and they have a teenage son Liam.
- Harrison Ford FAA Investigation Delayed By Heavy Traffic | TMZ.com
- Harrison Ford 'Completely Misjudged Runway' ... Last Second Save on Taxiway | TMZ.com
- Harrison Ford's Radio Missteps On Takeoff Before Botched Taxiway Landing | TMZ.com
- Harrison Ford in Incident With Passenger Plane at California Airport - NBC News
- Harrison Ford 'OK' after small plane crash - CNN.com
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