Recording captures miscommunication at JFK as El Al flight forced to briefly postpone landing

A recording of a conversation last week captures an apparent miscommunication between a pilot on an El Al flight and a traffic controller at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

The El Al flight was reportedly forced to postpone its landing because the body of a dead animal was found on the runway. The air traffic controller and the pilot then had a misunderstanding, which came “close to causing a traffic situation, given the other plane on departure,” according to One Mile at a Time, an airline news publication.

Channel 12 reports that the miscommunication appears to be the fault of the air traffic controller.

The plane was able to land safely, but the incident raised eyebrows in the wake of the attempted terror attack on a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv last month, in which the co-pilot attempted to crash the plane and was thwarted by the flight’s captain and several Israeli passengers.