9iron and Agaricus Bisporus -nicely put, agreed 100%
Well, since this thing got mentioned here I thought it might be of interest to have the story as the (known) tower controller told it (anonymously in public) in a Greek aviation-related discussion list. The controller kept referring to it as a non-incident:
[loosely translated from the Greek by myself]
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a) Weather and ATIS information at the time of the incident: 34010ŹŌ 9999 FEW025 10/06 Q1026 DEP 03R, LDG 03L, ATV DME U/S
b) Traffic Information. Arrivals: AFR2332 on 03L. Departures: a Veravia on 03R departing simultaneously with the French arrival.
On first contact, the French reported fully established ILS 03L and the controller (a very experienced and collected radar-trained guy, according to my own personal view) having verified his position on radar and having him in sight, cleared him to land also passing wind information. At some point the controller notices the aircraft pulling the nose up and gaining altitude, so he asks the pilot of any problems. (I later found that the aircraft was at 400ft height above the touch). The pilot responds “I call you back” and the aircraft continues to pull up. The controller asks the pilot to execute the published missed approach procedure for 03L and he subsequently informs the departures controller for the missed approach so that proper separation of the two aircraft can be established.
Please bear in mind that a missed approach on any of the runways at LGAV IS NOT separated with departures on the other runway(s). On hearing of the missed approach and since I had just handed my shift over to the next colleague, I went to arrivals to see whether any extra help was needed for the necessary communications with Approach regarding altitudes and frequencies and to offer an extra pair of ears that can sometimes prove useful. At the time when the French aircraft was overflying the runway I was looking at the radar screen instead to try and see where the departure was, so I was able to see the French to be at 2000ft by the end of the runway.
I forgot to mention that, together with the missed approach procedure, the arrivals controller also passed traffic information “light aircraft departing from 03R is now 600ft”. The radar controller repeats to the aircraft the missed approach information and the pilot reports continuing on the appropriate heading climbing to altitude 6000ft, turning right at 10nm. The controller hands him off to approach and we both sit down looking at each other baffled since there was no apparent reason for the missed approach. We however paid no particular attention to the whole incident since it is not an extraordinary occurrence. Moreover the pilot reported nothing at all regarding any unusual observations or any other reasons whatsoever. Naturally we all assumed that he had come in high on the approach and he had thus elected to go around. The departures controller immediately passed the information to the Veravia (Swearingen, SW4) that an Airbus A320 was executing a missed approach procedure, separated him in altitude and handed him off to Approach.
The whole story for me ends here as I left for home, despite it not exactly being “routine” due to its non-separation nature. I arrived only to find my father uttering words to the effect that two aircraft had almost collided to each other. As you can understand, I was left there standing dumbfounded. I did of course explain to him exactly what had happened, without however having any knowledge that inside the Air France was the opposition leader and a whole bunch of journalists, turning the whole incident into a major issue, which resulted in my colleagues staying up all night talking on the phone to various superiors and supervising authorities.
I later found out that the Tower had contacted the captain and that the reason for the whole upset was that the captain had indeed told his passengers in French of an object on the runway and in English of another aircraft on the runway, in order to try and preserve the prestige of both himself and his company (apparently he didn’t want to mention that he came in high because he thought that would rub off on him and he did not want to say that “he had an indication” because that would rub off on his company in terms of maintenance and safety standards). Despite that, I personally consider it unacceptable of a professional pilot to tell his passengers something like this. He could have at least put it in a more eloquent way; that he had for example had to go around for air traffic reasons or something.
In trying to understand what the French captain had in mind and why he reacted in this way, perhaps we should also mention that at LFPG the controller may clear an aircraft to land even when the aircraft is no3 on the ILS, based on the logical certainty that the preceding aircraft will have cleared the runway in time before the no3 needs to go around (as described in Doc 4444). I thus assume that going-around due to the runway being occupied is not such a rare occurrence in France. Fortunately, here we do not follow this practice yet but it still is a hot and favourite topic for discussion with pilots in the flight deck on some of my trips.
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Last edited by ThinkRate; 9th Dec 2003 at 21:08.