A White House plane with first lady Michelle Obama onboard aborted a landing Monday after narrowly avoiding a collision with a 200-ton military cargo jet."Narrowly avoiding a collision" is now defined as a 3-mile separation, which is the closest the planes ever got. There was never a danger of collision - the only risk to the 737 was wake turbulence behind the C-17. A five mile separation is required to avoid the possibility of encountering dangerous turbulence behind the cargo plane.
My personal theory - the controller called out "Wide Load cleared to land" and Obama's pilot mistook it for her Secret Service code name.
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I read somewhere else that the problem was that they weren't sure the C-17 would be off the runway soon enough.
That's another reason for the 5-mile separation, but the main threat was the wake turbulence. The wake from a C-17 could turn a 737 upside down if it ran into it.
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