Safety Concern

[ATIS]

Whilst at a UK airport, we heard a mayday declared by an aircraft.

Whilst the emergency aircraft was being positioned downwind, an aircraft on a 2 mile final was told to go-around which they did.

Now whilst the emergency traffic was intercepting the ILS two aircraft were allowed to depart.

Now wouldn't it have been a very dangerous situation if one of these two flights had to abort on the runway with a major problem and therefore closing the runway. I thought that was the reason of ordering the previous landing aircraft to go-around.

The pilots with the inbound emergency I guess wouldn't be too happy with a runway closed.

Keen to hear all your opinions and what the rules are.

[bagpuss lives]

Can you reveal where this took place?

[niknak]

No hard and fast rules, just use your judgement.. .Given the same situation, I think I would have done the same, a landing aircraft takes up more time and space than a departing one.. .As for what may happen, who knows?. .If you "know" the company, and if you can trust them to get on with the job, then you tend to allow a little more latitude in operating procedures.

[Oliver James]

About 10 years ago at LGW I was handed an A320 returning to us because for some reason couldn't turn left. We went through the process of co-ordination with ADC who ordered a F/E. Everything was broken off the approach that wasn't committed and everything else put in the holds.

Having examined all our possibilities we decided to put the traffic on a closing heading pointing at short final. The thinking (and there was a lot of it!!) was that a short final wouldn't give the strongish northerly wind enough chance to drift the traffic off the centreline. I mention all that to convey the nature of the emergency. The guys in the front sounded most unnerved.

As I turned him onto the closing heading at 13 miles I got a call from the tower to say that traffic being towed across the runway has just broken the tow bar..... and yes you can guess where it was when it happened! Great, a partially controllable aircraft and no runway!

I will never forget the few moments I took thinking about how to explain to this guy the predicament we had just put him in and his reply to my polite suggestion of 08L (really a taxiway). It was short but the tone of his voice said everything.

We are back at the argument of redundancy in our runway capacity, of which there is none in the UK. There is so little spare capacity at the majors that essential safety matters have to be waived in order to keep the traffic moving. That is fundamentally wrong.

Point 4

[hooplaa]

General rule of thumb at our NATS unit is - nothing departs when emergency aircraft is within 10 miles of touchdown, and definately never trust a tug to tow anything across. Sods law always states, that if the unlikely can happen - it will when you least need it to