Airprox?

[steve1969]

A BBC news bulletin is claiming "US jet blamed for near miss with passenger plane over UK". That is all they are reporting at the moment.

Does anyone know anything more about this?

[fen boy]

AAIB bulletin out today - contains report on Airprox on 13 August 2001 Fokker 50 and F-15.

Should be on AAIB web site

[Captain Stable]

http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/bulletin/jun02/gukth.htm

[steve1969]

Thanks for that guys.

[NorthernSky]

This demonstrates again that COMMERCIAL AIRLINERS SHOULD NOT FLY OUTSIDE CONTROLLED AIRSPACE. This cannot be overstated.

It is only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs, and when this happens, it will be extremely difficult for the airline or operator to demonstrate that they were operating their aircraft safely. Operators who do fly outside CAS need to think this one through very carefully.

[eyeinthesky]

How do you get to Newcastle or Teeside without flying outside CAS?

Don't think that you can get an airway put in. The new structure for the NSEA sector actually crams the civil aircraft closer together because the military want/need a bigger chunk of airspace for testing and training with the Eurofighter etc. The increasing (yes, despite 11/9 traffic is increasing) number of civil flights are being packed closer together so a few military jets a day can have space to practice. If you object, then you will be told that unless they have this space then Air Defence is compromised. Wins every time!

FYI, the new route from Newcastle/Scotland to Amsterdam will now route down the coast almost until the Wash and then SE to AMS as opposed to the present route. I wonder what impact this will have on airline profitability!

Not content with all this, we spend a large part of our time on NSEA answering the phone to Mil controllers who are trying to coordinate their traffic (which has everything below FL245 and more than 5 miles from the centreline of UARs to play in) against civil traffic which is constrained to the two UARs. Tail wagging dog springs to mind.:rolleyes:

[hatsoff]

That's a pretty poor AAIB Report , in fact it's the most useless I've read in over 30 years.

It misses most of the issues , moves the geography to Newcastle and comes to no conclusions.

Nobody has the guts to address the real issue of mixing Civil Passenger Carrying Flights with Military Operations.
I'm sure it can be done but not as we do it now.

All Pennine Controllers can tell you tales to make the hairs on your neck stand up.
The current system is not safe but politically and economically satisfactory.

[bookworm]

This demonstrates again that COMMERCIAL AIRLINERS SHOULD NOT FLY OUTSIDE CONTROLLED AIRSPACE. This cannot be overstated.

So what should these commercial operators do when they cross an FIR boundary and find themselves in an environment with uncontrolled VFR traffic again, in class E airspace? Places like France, Germany and the USA?

[Spitoon]

bookworm,

It's not something I know a great deal about but by the time an aircraft crosses an FIR boundary it's going to be FL 280+, is there much uncontrolled VFR traffic around at cruising levels? Or do you mean that in other FIRs the aerodrome approach phase of a flight is not conducted in a known traffic environment?

Can I put the question more simply, when I fly with a commercial airline on a scheduled flight, around Europe (or the USA?), how much confidence can I have that I'll be in Class D or better?

[bookworm]

Spitoon, exactly. You put it better than I did.

In the US, any flight will be in class E airspace from FL180 down to at best 10,000 ft around the major terminal areas, and down to typically 3000 or 4000 ft around any other places (many much busier than Teesside).

In Germany, many flights are in class E from FL100 down to 3000 ft when going to smaller airports.

In France, there are many destinations for which the flight will operate in class E or G from FL120 down to the surface.

Given, in particular that the US operates this system and has about half of the world's aircraft movements, if flying outside controlled airspace is sooooo dangerous, where are all the bodies?

[Captain Stable]

I would suggest that the problem is not so much uncontrolled airspace per se as the mixing in uncontrolled airspace of civil transport aircraft, military training traffic and unpredictable VFR private aviation.

Not many countries cram quite so much traffic into such a small space as we do in the UK. In the USA it's very easy to keep the military stuff away from the main routes. Where it does mix, in general all types of aviation are controlled by the same unit so there are not the same problems as here with lack of coordination between military and civil controllers.

Does anyone know if anything came out of the Shairspace series of meetings that happened last year?