[Peetwo]

Twin go-round 5 July 2015 - now on video.

Passenger video gives inside view of ATC screw up at Melbourne Airport


Ben Sandilands | Feb 07, 2016 5:00PM |


The head on lights of one Qantas 737 from inside another in Melbourne ATC stuff up
ABC News, and possibly the commercial networks, will tonight air an inflight passenger video of a set of near collisions involving two Qantas 737s and an Emirates 777 at Melbourne Airport last July.

The Qantas jets were both about to land, while the Emirates wide body was making its take off roll for Singapore.

The TV news programs may also show portions of a flight tracking video showing one of the Qantas jets being diverted to fly over the airport’s terminal area 600 feet below the safe minimum altitude by an air traffic controller to avoid the imminent risk of colliding with the other Qantas jet.

At one point in the video taken inside one of the Qantas 737s the lights on the oncoming other Qantas jet flare into head on visibility before it they are obscured by the wing of the climbing jet.

This is not what is expected inside an Australian domestic airliner approaching the country’s second largest airport.

However that collision risk had arisen because the tower had coordinated the movements of the three jets in what appears to have been unprofessional and negligent manner causing a hasty decision to direct one of the Qantas jets to abandon its approach and climb away from the airport to avoid the risk of colliding with the Emirates jet where its position on the runway being used for the takeoff would meet the landing Qantas jet on the other runway at the point where the runways intersected.

In sequence, the tower was confronted with a situation of its own making where a Qantas 737 could have flown into an Emirates 777, followed by a double go-around panic in which the two Qantas 737s were then put at risk of hitting each other.

The tower’s action in telling the Qantas jet descending toward the runway being used by the departing Emirates jet to go around then put it at risk of running into the Qantas jet that had previously initiated a go around to avoid a collision at the intersection of the two runways.

This was a clusterf*ck of the first order, the dangers of which only become apparent when the video taken inside the cabin of one of the Qantas jets, and another showing the flight tracked paths of the three jets are viewed with the appropriate explanatory narrative.

Which of course, might or might not fit in with the news values of the commercial networks, or the attention span of their audiences.

The information about this incident was pulled together by independent SA Senator, Nick Xenophon following the discovery of the passenger video and embargoed until 5 pm eastern daylight time today, allowing ample time for the complexity, and seriousness of the incident to be considered by the news networks.

Senator Xenophon has been pursuing the safety risks of Melbourne’s simultaneous use of intersecting runways for some time, specifically the procedure called LAHSO or land and hold short operations.

LAHSO has been both much criticised, and defended by, a range of safety studies for many years, notably in Canada and the US, where it is used at some airports.

Senator Xenophon has criticised the private owners of Melbourne Airport for clinging to LAHSO as a way of avoiding the costs of constructing a parallel runway which would prevent such conflicts arising.

The lack of judgment exercised by tower control on that night is astonishing and alarming. The tower was manned by an on-the-job trainer and a trainee controller. As the ATSB noted in its don’t scare anyone with the blunt truth interim report, there were two other controllers performing other functions in the tower that night.

In its interim report the ATSB says the jets involved in the incident didn’t infringe safe separation distances.  However given the procedural breakdown it confirms in that preliminary document, this is less relevant than it might seem.

What doesn’t get highlighted by the interim report is the situation where the safe minimum altitude for aircraft to fly over the airport’s passenger terminal area is 2000 feet, but the Qantas 737 that had been about to land behind the departing 777 received urgent advice to divert across the terminal area, crossing it at the unsafe and illegally low altitude of 1400 feet, while it was under increased power to climb away for its go around.

This breaking of this safe minimum altitude rule underlines the lack of preparedness, judgment and exercise of professional control that occurred in the Melbourne tower that night.

It put the lives of large numbers of travellers at risk in the air, and it broke a rule intended to reduce the risk of an airliner that might for example, experience a sudden loss of power or control, and crash into a terminal.

This last Australia Day there was another incident at Melbourne Airport in which a traffic helicopter at nearby Essendon Airport and two other jets using the larger airport infringed safe separation rules in what the ATSB now says involved a failure of communications in relation to a sudden change of runway procedures.

To follow on from Ben's article there was also this from the Oz:

Xenophon calls for safety audit of Airservices Australia

“Airservices Australia agreed this was a serious incident, but it took more probing and letters from me before night time LAHSO operations were suspended at Melbourne Airport from 10th November 2015 — over four months after the incident,” he said.

“When it comes to safety there must be no scrimping of staff, and we should be adopting world’s best practice,” he said.


Senator Xenophon said the double go-around was described in risk assessment modelling as a one-in-175-year event, but that two such events had occurred in the last five years.


“It seems there is something seriously wrong with this so-called risk assessment modelling when it comes to aircraft hurtling along at 800km per hour,” Senator Xenophon said.

And this from the SMH:

'Potential disaster' at Melbourne Airport sparks calls for safety overhaul

Date February 7, 2016 - 5:10PM



Nicole Hasham
Environment and immigration correspondent

The fears relate to an incident on July 5 when two Qantas jets – one from Sydney and the other from Canberra – were simultaneously forced to abort their night landings after an Emirates plane bound for Singapore delayed its take-off.

Senator Xenophon said the two Qantas aircraft ended up 20 seconds from collision and less than one nautical mile apart. He claimed this was a third of the mandated minimum separation, posing a "potential disaster".

Video footage taken by a passenger shows the plane approaching. Photo: Supplied

However, both Qantas and Airservices Australia, the corporate Commonwealth body responsible for airspace management, said the aircraft maintained the required minimum distance from each other at all times.

The incident involved two intersecting runways operating at the same time – a configuration critics say is a cheap option that is banned in most other countries, but still operates at Melbourne, Adelaide and Darwin airports – the latter for Defence operations. 

The situation was being controlled by a trainee controller on their fourth shift, who was being supervised. An investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is yet to be finalised, found an air traffic co-ordinator was forced to intervene in the incident, telling the trainee and their instructor that the "scenario involving the three aircraft was not going to work".

The plane disappears from view under the wing. Photo: Supplied

Senator Xenophon said air traffic controllers and pilots had contacted him "deeply concerned about the incident", adding that the Qantas aircraft were also at risk from air turbulence created by the departing Emirates jet. He called for an immediate safety audit of Airservices Australia.

"When it comes to safety, there must be no scrimping of staff, and we should be adopting world's best practice [of using more expensive parallel runways]," he said.

Video footage taken by a passenger on one of the Qantas planes shows the lights of another plane seemingly approaching close to the left side of the aircraft before disappearing from view under the wing.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon has called for a review of safety at Airservices Australia. Photo: Daniel Munoz

When the plane finally lands, the first officer can be heard apologising for the initial missed approach, saying ground controllers gave another aircraft clearance to take off, but "the pilots of that aircraft didn't proceed with their take-off when they should have and consequently that was going to put us into an unhelpful position".

At a Senate hearing in August last year, Airservices Australia official Greg Hood conceded it was a "serious incident".

In a letter to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in December, Senator Xenophon said Airservices' risk assessment was "clearly inaccurate",  because it gauged the likelihood of simultaneous missed approaches at Melbourne Airport at as low as once in 175 years, but two such instances had occurred in just five years.

In a statement, Airservices Australia said passenger safety was never threatened during the incident.

"Air traffic systems are designed to be resilient with many layers of defence to ensure that in the rare cases where errors are made, these are detected and recovered without any compromise to safety," it said.

It said the intersecting runway set-up, known as "land and hold short operations" [LAHSO], safely managed high traffic volumes and was used "at many major airports, including more than 100 locations in the United States".

A safety authority spokesman said after an investigation into the incident it restricted LAHSO procedures to daytime use at Melbourne and Adelaide airports. The safety authority said the procedures were not "inherently unsafe" and were being monitored.

A Qantas spokesman said the pilots of both aircraft "responded quickly and followed standard procedure for a missed approach, landing safely shortly afterwards".

"Qantas is comfortable with the land and hold short procedure at Melbourne Airport, which is used by all domestic airlines at Tullamarine without incident every day," the spokesman said.

By Nicole Hasham

MTF..P2