Mid-air Collisions Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Pilot fined £3,400 for “causing havoc” over Stansted airport

The Herts and Essex Observer has rather dramatically retold a story about a 25 year old pilot named Henry Marriott who could have “caused a mid-air catastrophe” in the busy skies over Stansted airport, being fined £3,400 after pleading guilty to entering controlled air space. The paper even reports that at one point, flights departing from Stansted were halted as the pilot appeared on radar to be “dangerously close” (just 1,215 feet) to an inbound Boeing 737 and it was “purely down to luck” why a mid air collision did not occur.

Of course, one has to take any general aviation or aircraft incident reported by the media with a few grains of salt and it should also be mentioned that blogger Sylvia of the Fear of Landing blog has done an excellent job of clarifying what happened without the hype or jumping to unnecessary conclusions like the need for more regulations or a ban on GA flying altogether.

With that in mind, here are the facts about the incident:

The pilot did not have an up-to-date pilot’s licence.
The pilot admitted to flying as a commander without an appropriate licence after failing to renew it when its five-year period expired on October 3, 2011.
The pilot’s small white and red two-seater had little in the way of instruments and no GPS or transponder.
The pilot entered Stansted controlled airspace at 1.20 pm and remained in it for 11 minutes, during which time all departing flights were suspended.
The pilot also wandered into Luton’s airspace where three inbound commercial flights had to be alerted to an unknown aircraft in the area.
The pilot said he recognized Stansted, but misjudged the distance and that he did not make radio contact because he was concentrating on his flying and navigation due to being lost.

The Magistrates chairman was then quoted as saying:

“You knew the airspace in this part of England is very congested and therefore the burden’s on you to be spot-on in your navigation. While you knew what altitude you were at no-one else did, or what your intentions were. You felt safe but that’s not the point.”

Sylvia did an excellent job of summarizing what happened by writing that:

He was lost
He was flying at low level and
He would be happy with help to get back on track.

For some reason though, the pilot did not ask for directions. She also pointed out that if there was a real risk of collision, the pilot would have been charged with “a lot more than entering controlled airspace.” Nevertheless, the pilot did create enough havoc to warrant charges and fines.

The pilot ultimately pleaded guilty to two offences of entering controlled airspace en route to Cuckoo Tye in Suffolk to Tisted in Hampshire without notifying his flight plan or obtaining air traffic control clearance beforehand. In addition to a £3,400 fine, he was ordered to pay £712 legal costs.

The lessons here? Keep your licence up-to-date, tell authorities on the ground what your intentions are and make sure you can be contacted in the air. In other words, use COMMON SENSE.

Fatal midair Sussex crash report released

The BBC has recently reported that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has released a report into a fatal mid-air collision over Sussex that occurred on July 4, 2011.

The accident involved a former British Airways captain named Alan Weal, 62, of Goring (near Worthing) who was conducting a test flight of a friend’s Vans RV-6A aircraft which had been modified. Weal had more than 20,000 hours of flying experience and he was on his third flight of the day when the crash happened.

The other aircraft, a Diamond DA40, came from a flying school based at Shoreham airport and its crew had more than 3,400 hours of flying experience. When the crash occurred, a flight instructor from the school was upgrading his instructor qualifications and was practicing teaching instrument flying to another instructor.

According to the AAIB report, the pilots failed to spot each other despite clear weather conditions plus information from air traffic control. However, the BBC quoted aviation analyst Chris Yates as saying:

Given the colour schemes of the aircraft and given the background colour of the sky it’s often difficult to spot other aircraft that may be moving the in the sky very close to you…. everybody involved had done what they were supposed to have to done to the letter.

For its part, the AAIB said its carrying out a study into improving aircraft visibility but certainly the accident goes to show that pilots always need to be vigilant for other aircraft – even in seemingly perfect flying conditions.

Poor lookouts equal a mid-air collision

General Aviation News will often print excerpts from US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident reports including one dated September 2009 about a mid-air collision involving a Piper Warrior and a Cessna 152 in Coolidge, Arizona that led to one fatality and one serious injury.

According to the report, the two aircraft were on simulated instrument flights in visual flight conditions doing lessons where the pilot in the left-seat had to wear a vision-restricting instrument training hood while the pilot in the right seat acted as a safety/lookout pilot. Moreover, the flights were taking place in airspace that had high density student training.

The accident itself occurred when the Piper rolled out of a right turn while practicing a holding pattern at a non-controlled airport while the Cessna pilot practiced departing a non-controlled airport to reach cruising altitude. Moreover, neither of the aircraft were under radar traffic advisories or in contact with controlling FAA facility but the Piper’s pilots later indicated they were monitoring the correct practice frequencies while the Cessna’s surviving pilot could not recall if he had made any position calls (However, his radio was set to the correct frequency).

The collision caused the Cessna’s right wing to penetrate the lower left engine cowl of the Piper while the Piper’s left main landing gear wheel and tire slammed into the right side of the Cessna’s aft fuselage. The collision’s impact also tore off part of the Cessna’s right wing and tail – causing it to crash while the pilots of the Piper were able to do a power-off forced landing.

Although the weather was reported as clear skies with 10 miles visibility, none of the surviving pilots said they had seen other aircraft before the collision occurred. Hence, the probable cause of the accident was ruled the failure of both the safety/spotter pilots to look out for and avoid other aircraft within the busy training airspace. In other words and even in perfect flying conditions, always be on the lookout for other aircraft.

Avoiding military flight activity

John Ewing has recently written an interesting post on Aviation Mentor about a topic that is not written about very often: How to avoid fast moving military aircraft activity. He began his post by noting an incident that involved an Air Force F-16CG colliding in mid air with a Cessna 172 over Florida. The Air Force pilot was able to eject from his aircraft with only minor injuries but the Cessna pilot was not so fortunate and he ended up loosing his life.

John then wrote about the following three keys to safely sharing airspace with fast moving military aircraft:

Understand what is regulatory and non-regulatory airspace. This includes special use and other airspace.
Know where military aircraft are scheduled to be operating.
Recognize the limits of "see and avoid.”

John also wrote more in-depth about the limits of “see and avoid” and he noted that most traffic collision avoidance is accomplished using this technique. However and in the case of the collision between the F-16 and the Cessna, the closure rate between the two accident aircraft was just over 20 seconds between the time that ATC received a conflict alert and when the impact occurred.

Ironically though, the biggest single factor that caused the collision was that it occurred inside Class C airspace where the Cessna pilot least expected to encounter fast moving fighters. In fact, the F-16 was involved in a training exercise and was actually off course by several miles. In other words, you should always be prepared for the unexpected when you are up in the sky.

Mid-air collisions and the reverie of flight

Scott Spangler has recently noted on Jetwhine an interesting story that some readers may have also seen as a headline on the Yahoo homepage. According to the AP story under the headline of 3 Die After Planes Collide Over Florida, three people died when a homebuilt aircraft and a Piper collided in a clear and sunny sky over central Florida and Scott noted that the incident had all of the “who, what, when, and where” of a typical midair.

So what are the typical characteristics of a midair crash? A recent study of midair collisions by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) revealed the following:

Most of the aircraft involved in collisions are engaged in recreational flying, not on any type of flight plan.
Most midair collisions occur in VFR weather conditions during weekend daylight hours.
The vast majority of accidents occurred at or near uncontrolled airports and at altitudes below 1000 feet.
Pilots of all experience levels were involved in midair collisions, from pilots on their first solo ride, to 20,000-hour veterans.
Flight instructors were on board the aircraft 37 percent of the accidents in the study.
Most collisions occur in daylight with visibility greater than 3 miles.

In the recent incident over the skies of Florida, Scott noted that reports of the accident mentioned that the destinations of both aircraft were unknown and a local sheriff was quoted as saying that: “There are a lot of unknowns right now.” However, Scott offered his own explanation:

But at the heart of the matter, these details are unimportant. The accident happened because the pilots surrendered to the reverie of flight.
Reverie is “dreamy thinking or imagining, especially of agreeable things; fanciful musing; daydreaming.” Pilots who steadfastly deny falling victim to it are, perhaps, saying more about their rectitude than their ability to maintain a hyper-aware vigilance during every second of every flight.

In other words, flying is both a fun and a serious activity that requires the complete attention span of a pilot. And although the chances of a midair collision are low, they can and do happen – especially if you surrender to the “reverie of flight” even for only a few seconds.

Amazing near midair collision video

Here is segment from CNN that includes an amazing video taken by a German Pilot who was flying a small two-seater 1,000 feet above the French countryside when he had a near miss with another airplane. Unfortunately, his propeller got caught in the cable used by the other plane to tow a glider and the pilot was forced to turn off his engine, pull the plane’s parachute and land in an orchard – walking away without a scratch.

CNN then quoted Ballistic Recovery Systems in St Paul Minnesota as saying that their parachute devices for aircraft have saved at least 199 lives since their development. They also noted how parachutes for aircraft have evolved from being accessories for hang gliders, then ultralights, then light sport aircraft and now increasingly standard pieces of equipment for new general aviation aircraft. In fact, they are now standard for new Cirrus aircraft models

As for that German pilot, he credits the parachute for saving his life. He also rebuilt his own aircraft and of course – got a new parachute for it.