Near miss at KJFK

[NGXfanatic 85]

Hi folks, this is all over the news in the U.S., apparently on June 13th there was a near miss between a Delta 747 and a Shuttle American Emb170 near JFK. 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/travel/nyc-jfk-airliners-too-close/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

First thing I did was go to Passur.com to pull up a replay of traffic at about 14:37 EDT.   

http://www4.passur.com/jfk.html

Strange thing, but the path of the Delta 747 becomes frozen at some point over the Atlantic when it's on downwind to runway 4R.  Not sure if is a data error, or intentional deletion of the the record of the flight data, but you do see the Emb170 take off from KLGA.

 

Also, check out the flightaware record of the Delta flight.  

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL172/history/20130613/0610Z/RJAA/KJFK

 

It appears to me the 747 was executing a go around, and while on said go around was put on a heading directly in conflict with the departing Embraer regional jet.  That's my quick read of the situation, there is no way the two aircraft should have been close to each other if the 747 was not in a go around situation.   I can't figure out why the captain of the 747 turned left to face the oncoming LGA departures on the G/A, when simply staying on runway heading for runway 4 would have sufficed. 

 

What do you folks think?  This is an interesting puzzle to try to figure out with just the simple story from the news, and your own research on the web to guide you.  It's amazing, all the tracking data the public has it's disposal in the internet age!

 

EDIT: I found a better, more detailed article about the incident:

http://www.nycaviation.com/2013/06/close-call-between-delta-747-and-shuttle-america-e170-what-really-happened/#.UcUBgZzcBFE