Originally Posted by
Luc Lion
ATC Watcher, you may be familiar with the French BEA report about an incident that occurred in Bordeaux-Mérignac on December 22nd, 2022 and where an Airbus A320 was cleared to land on a runway where a DR400 was awaiting a take-off clearance?
The A320 crew performed a late missed approach on the controller's request but they never saw the DR400, in daylight VMC conditions.
Oh yes , and raising quite a few questions in our circles I can tell you ! , but there no SMR, just one controller alone doing 4 positions and frequencies at the same time :Clearance delivery/ ground, APP. TWR and Flight info to VFR (FIS over a large area ). Procedures. R/T all was OK , just the fact that he told the DR400 to line up and wait for wake turbulence separation behind a departure , then he cleared the A320 to land and he forgot the DR400. And it was because its pilot reminded the controller that he was still on the runway , that prompted the controller to issue the go around . Without that call it could have been an accident .
Here the error is obvious :and clear . Controller forgot an aircraft . happens once in a while unfortunately. , reason is he was overloaded /distracted by high number of VFR traffic on FIS, Problem they should have been 3 on duty at that time and he was alone .So nobody there to spot his error. Solution and recommendation : ensure that all the controllers that were planned to work that day were actually on duty . That is the main issue and quite controversial if you know the ATC background in France.
Unfortunately, the report is only available in French.
I could say fortunately , as it is not very glorious to the French DGAC .