BA jet seconds from disaster in US ‘near collision’ | the Daily Mail — Here is a peculiar and somewhat under-reported story.
The emergency collision avoidance system on the Boeing 777 plane kicked in over the Atlantic Ocean, causing lights to flash and an alarm to sound in the cockpit, with the pilot hearing the words “descend,descend,descend.”
The descent was so sudden that some of the crew members left the floor, went into “freefall” and hit their heads on the ceiling of the plane as it plummeted.
Others slammed into the bulkheads. All four crew were stood down from their duties while being treated for bruises on board in the Club cabin for the remainder of the flight.
found by Aric Mackey
The article says the BA jet was at 16,500 ft but doesn’t mention the altitude of the other plane. I wonder how close the near collision was?
Unfortunately the Daily Mail is widely recognised in the UK for ‘dressing up the facts’ a tad (it seems to have swapped places with ‘The Sun’.. )There may be some truth in this but look in another UK paper for the factual account…
Survive one of these and the QE2 looks great for the next crossing.
That’s ridiculous that they kept on going with injured crew members. 15 minutes from Tampa is not that far off to turn back to the airport.
#4,
Right you are. Don’t turn back because of injured flight attendants. But let them find a cellphone that none of the passengers would claim and they would turn back for fear of “terrorism”. đ
The problem is takeoff weight and landing weight are two different things…they would have had to circle tampa for hours in order to land.
What they got was known as an RA or ‘resolution advisory’ from their TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) which is a device in the airplane that monitors a bubble, if you will, around the airplane, and tells the pilots if another plane is getting too close. While not common, RA’s do occur, particulary in So Cal, where there is a lot of small airplanes flying near big airplanes.
My question is why did the BA crew act so aggressively as to bounce some crewmmembers off the ceiling in their response. I wasn’t there, but something is missing from this story.
they would have had to circle tampa for hours in order to land
No, they’d just dump the fuel.
My question is why did the BA crew act so aggressively as to bounce some crewmmembers off the ceiling in their response.
They didn’t – the system does it automatically if the crew doesn’t respond quickly enough, as happened a few years back over Germany – two planes were on a collision course and the systems put them both into a dive with the result that they collided…
Another good reason to keep your safety belt on at all times during flight.
From the Orlando Sentinal
…
FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the British Airways 777 was traveling 50 to 60 miles north of Tampa when it was first instructed by air traffic controllers to climb to 26,000 feet.
Meanwhile, a privately operated Beechcraft King Air was located a mile away and flying about 1,400 feet above the British Airways flight’s altitude. The private aircraft told air traffic controllers that it was aware of the commercial airliner’s position, Bergen said.
Air controllers instructed the British Airways flight, which had then reached an altitude of 16,800 feet, to go to 16,500 feet. The collision avoidance system triggered in the British Airways flight, and the pilot brought the plane down 700 feet in the controlled descent, Bergen said.
“British Airways didn’t mention anything to air traffic control about injuries” during the flight, and the flight continued to London as planned, Bergen said.
She said the FAA was later notified by British Airways that four flight attendants received minor injuries.
I would assume since this was shortly after takeoff, the passengers would be still wearing their seatbelts or else there would have been quite a few injured. The attendants were up and around which is why they were injured.
The Brazilian jet that went down earlier this month and killed all of its passengers and crew was involved in an ACTUAL collision with a private executive jet even with all the high anti-collision technology turned on. The private jet’s wing was clipped off at 36,000 feet with the Boeing but incredibly managed to land with all of ITS passengers unharmed! One of the guys on that private jet was a Times reporter, Mr. Sharky who wrote about his experience. I remember reading his report but I couldn’t find it anymore in their article database. Seems like the Times pulled it out. Very interesting that it survived!
#11, I found the article which you might have to be an online Times subscriber ($49.95 a month, and well worth it) to view it:
http://tinyurl.com/ujx69
I am a retired Air Traffic Controller, from what I have read in the newspaper (As in #10) that the timing of the events are important. But from what I know, the controller used very bad judgement in their actions.
What he/his did may have been right by the books. As the small plane saw the larger BA airliner. The smaller was in no position to get off of the way of the larger airliner.
Think of it as two boats one row boat and one oil super tanker. The row boast see the super tanker. and the super tanker told to turn towards the row boat. There is no way the row boat can get out of the way of the other. The Air traffic controller should have known that and stop the airliner off below the other known aircraft.
I worked for over 23 year at an enroute center and never had an controller error.
#13, well you could have had one here if you did it any differently then what the AT controller already did. Remember, the air turbulence from a plane the size of a 777 could have disastrous consequences for something the size of a KingAir.
The KingAir was about 1,400 above the climbing 777. The 777 was told to descend 300 ft but the anti collision detector kicked in before it could initiate the decent.
Depending upon the flight paths and other aircraft, either airplane, or both, could have veered horizontally away the other. Since we don’t know what other aircraft were nearby, their size, how close they were, or their flight paths, this is really second guessing.
“They didnât – the system does it automatically if the crew doesnât respond quickly enough, as happened a few years back over Germany – two planes were on a collision course and the systems put them both into a dive with the result that they collided⌔
I am not sure of what system that you mean that can take control of the airplane, TCAS is advisory only, the same as GPWS (Ground proximity warning system) It won’t stop you from hitting a mountain, but it will be telling you to pull up until impact.
From what I understand about TCAS, the two IFF interregators are ‘talking’ to each other and in a typical scenario are smart enough to tell one plane to descend, and one to climb. In no way can it move flight controls, it just gives guidance ‘ie climb climb climb’. There is more to it than that, but it is a very elegant and nice system. I feel naked flying without it.
What happened in Gemany was the pilot of one aircraft disregarded the TCAS resolution advisory (RA) and did what ground controllers told him, while the other aircraft obeyed his RA, and they collided. This is why you always obey the RA, it is real time. An interesting note, if you lose and engine for some reason, we turn off the RA portion of TCAS, because you won’t be able to perform a climb with the reduced available thrust.
Disclaimer, I am only an Airbus 320 pilot.
Just my opinion.
sorry about the bold, I am still a rookie with the computer thing though.
#16, Not a problem, it only made it easier to get your point.
:0
Expert opinions are always welcome.
#15, Busdriver, as an experienced airplane pilot do you think the maneuver of the 757 that descended rapidly and crashed into the Pentagon just inches of the lawn was possible by a novice “terrorist” pilot?
The TCAS does not dive the aircraft automatically, it only tells the pilot to climb or decend and how fast to do it in. If the pilots have visual contact with the plane that the TCAS is issuing the RA (Resolution Advisory) they can disreguard the RA and take what ever action is needed to avoid the conflict. If they are in the clouds and can’t see the other traffic then they have to follow the RA. TCAS will not tell a pilot to turn, only climb or decend. The 2 TCAS systems in the 2 planes “talk” to each other and decide who will go up or down depending on position. Since the pilots of the airline did not see the King Air they had to follow the TCAS RA. If the TCAS issued and RA telling them to decend at 2000 feet per minute they don’t have a lot of time to make it a gentle decent. In the end a couple flight attendants got bruised up and probably told the captain they were ok to continue. Still better than a mid air with the other aircraft.
In the end it’s another case of the media creating something out of nothing. They prey on the fears of the non-aviation public for a good story. They should have said that the TCAS system worked as designed just like it does for thousands of flights everyday.
When people who know I’m a pilot tell me about the “terrible flight” they had I ask them why it was so bad…they say something like…oh the pilots were terrible, it was bumpy the whole way and the landing was rough. I say “The pilot probably took you around a dozen thunderstorms, kept you safe, the bumps aren’t the crew’s fault, we try and get in the smoothest air we can. The landing? A nice gusty day with a good cross-wind? The pilots probably thought it was a great landing considering what they had to deal with. It was a little bumpy? Who cares? They just flew you thousands of miles, 8 miles up in the air, in a thin alluminum tube, around all kinds of weather and had to sweet talk a controller to get a faster route so you would make your next connection on your $200 flight.”
I recently flew commercial (something I rarely do because I fly military for a living) and we were late into Atlanta due to thunderstorms, and most connecting flights were cancelled. During the ride to the motel everybody kept saying things like “I’ll never fly “blank” airline again” or “Blank” airline is terrible” The airline didn’t create the thunderstorms over Atlanta folks, nothing they can do about it.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now, just tired of non-aviation people second guessing things they know nothing about. BTW flying microsloths flight sim does not qualify anybody to make judgements about flying. Niether does listening to the media…who also know nothing about flying.
Ok, done now, thanks for letting me vent.
to #8:
the collision in germany happened because the one pilot disobeyed TCAS for traffic congtroler, while the other obeyed TCAS.
following the incident the pilots are instructed to take precedence of TCAS warnings to human traffic controller’s. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Collision_Avoidance_System#Current_implementation
the idea is that if TCAS needs to kick in, the controller had already made a mistake.
since the decision for both planes needs to be made within seconds, it’s best to trust the computer than a human who is trying to understand what the hell is going wrong.