Posted on 12/29/2009 3:56:10 PM PST by sofaman
An El-Al passenger jet bound for New York nearly collided with an Air France airliner over the skies of Belgrade on Monday, Channel 2 revealed on Tuesday evening.
According to the report, the Serbian air controller made a mistake and instructed the Air France airplane to fly on a route already used by the El Al plane, so that the jets were on a collision course.
The two planes were about to crash in midair, but emergency alarms alerted both pilots and the El-Al plane changed course at the last minute, when the distance between the aircraft was only 300 meters.
Serbian authorities reportedly claimed that the Serbian air controller was responsible for the incident and aviation authorities there launched an investigation into the near-accident.
According to the report, El Al commended the Israeli pilot, stressing that at no point during the incidents were the passengers, crew or airplane in danger.
I am sure this Serbian was not a Muslim. That would be impossible.
At least in Serbia, there will be a job opening for an ATC.
Seems they left of her or his name.....suppose it was Mohammed?
Nice to see Janet Incompetano has already found work as a spokesman (sic) for El Al.
Yeah. Since it would appear Muslims haven't yet figured out a way to blow something up without being 'in' the something.
Perish the thought. Muslims would never do anything to endanger the lives of innocents. I could ... never mind.
I guess when you are flying in or out of Israel, you are used to dodging missiles. Dodging another plane was probably child's play.
Geez...300 meters...thats NOTHING in terms of distance for two huge metal tubes in the sky blasting at close to 500 mph towards each other. Can any pilots here tell me how much time 300 meters at those speeds BUYS for decision making...was it even more than one second?
>stressing that at no point during the incidents were the passengers, crew or airplane in danger.<
Then why is it considered a near crash and why is there going to be an investigation?
All commercial airliners have a collision avoidance system and I am sure the Israeli pilots are among the best trained in the world. El Al aircraft also have missile countermeasures, for obvious reasons. Avoiding a missile is entirely different than avoiding a collision with a another aircraft.
It’s surprising that the Serbs manned up and admitted fault.
BTW, the Urkranians shot down a Russian commercial plane in October, 2001 during a military exercise. At first they denied it, but the U.S. DoD sided with the Russians. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/us-insists-missile-brought-down-russian-airliner-630447.html
Occam’s and Hanlon’s Razors indicate this was most likely a plain old brain-fart screwup by the controller.
Common sense indicates that the source probably doesn’t have the controller’s name or didn’t see what was to be gained by publicly shaming for messing up at their job.
Incidentally, excluding Kosovo, Muslims make up less than four percent of the Serbian population.
But never mind; I’m sure this was an attempted act of terrorism.
The behavior of extremist Muslims, imho, and the propensity of their brethren to blow themselves, along with a large number of innocents, to Kingdom Come explains the assumption this mistake may have been an attempted terrorist attack.
But a moment’s sober thought would reveal that assumption groundless.
Not Bush’s fault?
Bush’s fault. Of/f course.
If my math is correct 500mph is about 223.4 meters/second. How much time they had depends on the angle they were approaching each other.
Whew - high-stakes game of chicken!
At a closing speed of 900+ kts TAS you’re covering a lot of ground ,, my calculation may be wrong but I came up with 1/83rd of a second.
Nobody can react that fast ,, they missed because they were on slightly different paths.
Chilling...
Terrorists are nothing if not devious & brazen. Exploding knickers & shoes, flying airplanes into the Twin Towers and blowing up trains.
It isn't at all unreasonable to jump to this conclusion, even though, in this case, it appears to be erroneous.
So based on your calculations, if they are traveling at one another, that is a combined air speed of almost 1000 mph = aprox 550 meters per second, then 300 meters represents a time window of a little over one half of a second to make a decision and take action...
I was flying back from Washington, D.C. about ten years ago. I like looking out the window to see the landscape. As I looked out over Arizona, something like 450 to 600 feet below, another aircraft was headed in the opposite direction.
It’s close proximity to us going in the opposite direction caused me to think that was a close call.
I talked to a former pilot about it, and he stated this wasn’t that big a deal. I described the incident to him saying it was about 1000 feet away. To a novice like me, it sure seemed like a big deal.
I’ve since thought about the size that aircraft appeared to be, and I don’t think it was 1000 feet away after all.
Sounds frightening and it’s stayed with you so it definitely made an impression. Recognizing our own mortality is pretty sobering.
It wasn’t so much frightening as it was shocking to see it that close. It did make me think about flying... LOL
Thats what the math tells us. Not nearly enough time to change the direction on one of these big jets.
apparently they were not really 300m apart. the 300m was height difference. at the time of el al’s change of course, two planes were 3.5 nautical miles away from each other.
also, we have totally different story here in the media regarding who is to blame for the incident: according to our civil airspace authority, the fault is with air france’s pilot who did not honor the set descend height, he continued to descend past FL350 which was the path given by the controller. also, we have been informed that the controller actually contributed to safe ending of this incident, because he sent out a warning to both aircraft.
dunno if this is true, i don’t really believe our media that much.
Thanks for the update; the way the story was originally written I couldnt quite get my mind around how close these two planes came from actually colliding. In retrospect, it looks like the original reporting wasnt clear at all about the specifics of what actually happened.
Your experience wasn’t a close call. All Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) flights fly at even or odd thousands of feet. Even if on a westerly heading, odd on an easterly heading. Visual Flight Rules (VFR) is the same +500’. So a VFR flight could be at say 7,500’ while passing under an IFR flight at 8,000’ heading in an opposite direction.
When I say opposite, though, it could be very little difference in heading. A flight going SSW at 190 degrees heading would be at even levels, while a flight heading south at 175 degrees would be at odd levels. It could even be as little at two degrees of difference in heading. Without double checking I think it’s due north 360 degrees to 179 degrees south is odd flight levels while 180 degrees to 359 is even flight levels.
Thank you for your explanation. While that makes sense, you will have to accept that some of us are going lo still be a bit nervous about it. LOL
Thanks and care.
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