While this obviously pales in comparison to the Air Canada Jazz CRJ-900 accident we just saw, a United Boeing 737 had a very strange incident, whereby the pilots tried to take off on the edge of the runway. After rejecting the takeoff, the pilots didn’t even have the aircraft inspected, but just headed right back to the runway, to take off again.
United plane has botched takeoff at Chicago O’Hare Airport
The Aviation Herald has the details of an incident happened a little after 8PM on Thursday, March 19, 2026. It involves United Airlines flight UA1394, scheduled to operate from Chicago O’Hare Airport (ORD) to San Antonio Airport (SAT). The 1,041-mile flight was operated by a Boeing 737-700 with the registration code N15712.
The plane taxied out to runway 10L, where it was doing a midfield takeoff from taxiway DD, around 3,000 feet down the runway. However, rather than aligning with the runway centerline, the pilots instead lined up with the runway edge lights on the left side.
They clearly eventually realized their mistake, and ended up rejecting their takeoff at around 60 knots. The plane vacated the runway around 2,300 feet later, 5,300 feet down the runway. They then just taxied to the runway again, and took off just minutes later. The plane landed in San Antonio 2hr15min after takeoff, without further incident.
In a report, the FAA stated that the aircraft struck the runway and taxiway lights while entering the runway. VASAviation has a visualization of what happened, plus air traffic control audio.
The handling of this incident seems very strange
On the surface, an incident like this is puzzling, though in fairness, most of us have never been at the controls of a 737 at O’Hare at night, so maybe there’s something we don’t understand.
Looking at the factors here, it’s worth pointing out that both the centerline and edge lights of the runway are white. Still, you’d see three “rows” of white lights, and if you want to be on the centerline, you’d want your wheels to be along the center white lights. In other words, you’d want to make sure that there are white lights both to the left and right of you, in addition to in front of you. How two airline pilots got that wrong is confusing.
What I find most concerning about this incident is how the pilots seemingly pretended that nothing happened, operations continued as normal, and the plane just took off minutes after the initial incident.
While runway lights are in theory designed to not break if run over, and to not cause damage to aircraft, it’s still a best practice to both inspect the aircraft’s gear, and to perform an inspection of the runway, to make sure there’s no debris. After all, runway debris has been the cause of some accidents, including the one fatal Concorde crash.
It’s concerning that the pilots seemingly didn’t communicate what happened, and felt comfortable just immediately taking off again, despite what is a pretty major incident. Even from a psychological perspective, you would assume that pilots aren’t in a great mental state after realizing the mistake they’ve made, and would want a second to cool off.
Bottom line
A United Boeing 737 attempted a takeoff roll while lined up with the edge of the runway at Chicago O’Hare. Once the pilots realized their mistake, they aborted the takeoff, and that was at around 60 knots. They then immediately headed back to the runway, and took off minutes later, without any sort of inspection of the aircraft or of the runway.
What do you make of this United 737 takeoff incident?
