Close Call in Burbank
[Guest post by DRJ]
There was a near miss at the Burbank airport this week:
“The near collision – at least the third such incident in the state since February to prompt federal investigations – occurred Monday at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, but was not disclosed by the National Transportation Safety Board until Friday.
It was not immediately clear why the incident was not reported earlier. A call to the NTSB was not returned Friday.
The Boeing 737-700 carrying 119 passengers and five crew members was landing from Oakland when a Cessna 172, which was involved in a practice maneuver known as “touch and go” on another runway, arrived at the intersection at about the same time.
The planes came within an estimated 200 feet vertically and 10 feet laterally of each other, the Federal Aviation Administration said.”
The incident was blamed on an “excellent controller who made an unusual, and unfortunate, mistake.” I consider “10 feet laterally” to be more than a mere mistake but maybe I’m overreacting. What do the pilots out there think?
— DRJ
the 200 feet vertically helps a lot, but the overall “whoops” is ugly to contemplate….
assuming it was a normal pattern day, the 737 was coming in from the west and the Cessna was taking off to the south. since the 737 would be rolling when it got to the intersection, the Cessna went over it. not sure what the result would be if they tangled, given the size differential, but it wouldn’t be pretty. a lot would rest on what hit where, but the little plane would almost certainly lose, no matter what.
worse would be two 737’s meeting, one on take off and one landing. that would be doubleplus ungood.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/23/2010 @ 11:01 pmThat’s one heck of a controller error. I’ve experienced a few of those flying lately, including one which nearly resulted in a head on South of Jacksonville last month.
bob (fca117) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:27 amThough the Cessna would have lost, depedning on where the 737 was hit, it could easily have resulted in a fire and substantial loss of life. Lucky the Cessna was already airborne by the time the two intersected.
Agree with comment #1. Distance between planes is a tad over 200 ft.
But that is way too close, as I believe that is less than the size of one of the aircraft
Dr. K (1c5e6a) — 4/24/2010 @ 4:01 am#3 Dr. K:
Also agreed, but some perspective on 200ft: which is about how tall a 20 story building is.
The FAA/NTSB definition of “near miss” is a very wide physical margin, with good reason considering the consequences of midair collision.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/24/2010 @ 4:06 amComment #1 nailed it, and that’s too close.
htom (412a17) — 4/24/2010 @ 6:36 amWhat I’ve always been worried about was the number of near – misses that go unreported. I can recall at least a half – dozen times over the past decade when a flight that I was on had to severely accelerate and bank right after takeoff in order to avoid a mid – air collision. Our traffic control system is woefully outdated, and I sincerely hope that the scheduled upgrades are pushed forward.
Dmac (21311c) — 4/24/2010 @ 8:02 amFollowup on #6: Problems plague new air traffic control computers, and for those of you that follow the link, “Jovial” is “Jerome’s own version of the Algorithmic Language,” which dates back to Algol in the 1960s. Basically, lawyers, politicians, etc. are paid so much better than technical people that much of the technical skill base is dying off, or at least leaving the profession (or the country).
docduke (eeabb0) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:46 amThe FAA defines a “near miss” as anything inside 500 feet.
Having flown both fighters and airliners for about 30 years, I can tell you that anything less than 500 feet, to say nothing of 10 feet, when you don’t expect it or plan to do it is EXTREMELY unnerving.
In a trip profile, there are a few “critical phases of flight,” takeoffs and landings being the two most obvious. In the takeoff phase, especially in big airplanes (I fly the MD-11), once you get past a certain speed, your options are reduced dramatically, as is your reaction time to something like this near miss. Intersections at fields where runways cross is in our scan from the moment we release brakes. The problem is that at a certain point where, thanks to a controller or pilot error, two airplanes attempt to occupy the same airspace simultaneously, we can’t do much about it…we’re either going too fast to stop or too slow to rapidly maneuver away from the threat. Basically, if it isn’t your day, you just die all tensed up. That’s why the radio is so important in “clearing”–the term used to maintain your situational awareness as to where everyone is at any given time in the airport environment.
The FAA and NTSB have been concerned about runway safety for years and their attention to it has only increased. Here’s a good link on how they’re handling it. Needless to say, it’s a big deal in the airlines, too.
For what it’s worth, here’s the NTSB Press Advisory on the incident in this post.
Attila_of_Argghhh (785606) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:54 amA couple of decades ago when I was learning to fly I spent an hour doing touch and goes in a hot little low wing plane in a very small rural airport and an beautiful old and still flying DC-3 was thundering down the runway.
I was plenty far away and absolutely in no danger of collision, but neither me nor my instructor heard anything from the air traffic controller in the larger airport roughly 10 miles away that controlled the airspace over the little one strip community airport.
Had we come in a near miss, I suspect that the pilots of both planes (me and the commercial pilot) would have lost our cookies just before saying “Oh Sh*t”
The Pilot and co-pilot of the 737 likely had to change their uniform pants anyway.
GM Roper (6afe02) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:14 am“Jovial” is “Jerome’s own version of the Algorithmic Language,”
I learned it as JOVIAL, or “Jule‘s Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language,” when I was assigned to the USAF and NATO E-3 AWACS units many years ago. Air defense software had long been written in JOVIAL.
Was interesting language, lets you get away with many dangerous programming practices. It even had a single command that let me go directly from JOVIAL into IBM 370 Assembler language, fiddle the bits, and back to JOVIAL again within a subroutine.
Eric (32f5db) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:19 pmAt Burbank, the two runways cross near the south
end of the airport. The airliner was landing heading east while the Cessna was landing heading south.
The controller expected the Cessna to depart runway 15 before the airliner crossed on runway 8. Probably the Cessna was slowed to approach speed some distance from the runway and took longer to reach the runway than the controller anticipated
It also takes about 6 seconds in a C-172 to reset flaps from the full-flaps landing to take off position, and this may have slowed down the Cessna’s takeoff roll and climbout.
Mike (5249d9) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:48 pmPerhaps this is a cautionary tale as to why T&G’s should not be conducted at fields where there are commercial carriers?
AD - RtR/OS! (9562e0) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:52 pmAD – nothing like being at Bradley International in Windsor Locks, CT when the C-5 Galaxies from Westover AB in MA do touch and goes on the main strip. I used to watch them years ago and I don’t know if they still do that.
Have Blue (854a6e) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:22 pmJOVIAL? !!!
But but but … that was supposed to have gone away when we rewrote it all into Ada in the 1980s. What happened … I’ll be quietly grinding my teeth over in the corner.
Jule’s Own Version of International Algorithm Language is correct; Jules Schwartz was the lead on that language project at IBM. First made a standard in the late fifties, a contemporary of FORTRAN, COBOL, and the impossible to write a compiler for ALGOL. Thunks for the memories. Lots of the 3G-HHL had the “drop to the hardware” feature, where we could massage the bits in highly effective but nearly impossible to update ways.
htom (412a17) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:31 pmI consider “10 feet laterally” to be more than a mere mistake but maybe I’m overreacting.
The important part is the 200 feet vertically. (Depending on what kind of 172, and how it was being flown, that’s 5-20 seconds of climb). But given the approach speeds, the Cessna would be coming in about 70 mph, and the 737 probably about 140 mph.
There should have been a lot more separation than that, but mistakes do happen.
(Had the 172 been 200 feet *below* the 737, it wouldn’t likely have been pretty.)
Perhaps this is a cautionary tale as to why T&G’s should not be conducted at fields where there are commercial carriers?
Comment by AD – RtR/OS!
Unless you’re planning on shutting down most of the big flight schools, no.
(This is why I learned at an uncontrolled field, but there’s a lot of people who disagree with me on that, and especially for guys who will be commercial pilots, think you should do all the initial training in the ATC arena.)
But these things are relatively rare, and usually controllers have this sort of thing down.
Old pilot maxim:
Unix-Jedi (455b8a) — 4/24/2010 @ 2:34 pmYou screw up, you die.
ATC screws up, you die.
And on a less serious note, a “near miss” would actually mean two planes collided. Correct would be “a near hit.”
j.l. (01103c) — 4/24/2010 @ 4:38 pm#14 htom:
Well, we relearned the lesson that unfunded government mandates fail…
Meantime, Ada has been successful … mostly in Europe.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/24/2010 @ 4:58 pmI think it would be more desciptive if it was referred to as a “close miss”. You could have distance qualifiers:
AD - RtR/OS! (9562e0) — 4/24/2010 @ 5:43 pmFar Miss…x ft H & V;
Close miss…y feet H & V;
Oh $hit….less than y feet H & V.
Oh, BTW, you want to do T&G’s in a 767 (whatever), Mojave is CAVU most days of the year, and you can practice your crosswind work.
AD - RtR/OS! (9562e0) — 4/24/2010 @ 5:45 pm