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A Frontier Airlines flight from Florida to Ohio had to pull out of its initial landing on Tuesday afternoon after a vehicle was spotted too close to the runway.
The pilot of the plane attempting to land the flight on Tuesday from Orlando, Florida, at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Ohio pulled out of the landing using a planned procedure known as a "go-around," according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson Tony Molinaro, who spoke to Cleveland.com.
Molinaro said that the maneuver is undertaken by a pilot when they are attempting to break off a landing after already beginning their approach down to the runway.
"A go-around maneuver is made while the plane and the vehicle retain a safe separation between each other," he said in the statement.
"To an airline passenger, the event may seem like an emergency maneuver, but the controller and pilot are in control of the situation and are taking the action before any unsafe condition could occur."
Molinaro confirmed that the pilot initiated the maneuver after noticing that a "vehicle was making its way past a runway slower than expected" that was "too close to the runway area."
A Cleveland Hopkins spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that despite the incident, they "verified with Airport Operations and the Air Traffic Control Tower that there was not an incident nor a potential incursion."
Jan Herold, a passenger on the flight from Florida, told Cleveland.com that the plane was "within a few seconds of landing" when it pulled out of its descent on Tuesday, adding that she could "see the runway."
Data from FlightAware showed that at around 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday the plane reached an elevation of 1,175 feet on its initial descent before then quickly going back up to 1,900 feet.
After the plane reached a high of 3,950 feet again, it descended and successfully landed at the Cleveland airport at around 2:07 p.m.
Herold said that the passengers on the plane stayed calm during the maneuver, and added that "the pilots did a really good job landing when we did land.
"At least they were proactive in letting us know what was going on because everyone was definitely questioning like, 'are we on the wrong runway, what's going on?'
"You see those stories in the news of things that happen, so you're just kind of curious of what's happening. But they did a good job overall, the crew did."
Newsweek has contacted the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Frontier Airlines and the FAA for comment.
