Taipei Times - archives
Pilot, controller to blame for air incident, ASC says
FASTEN YOUR SEATBELATS: An investigator said that passengers on an FAT flight experienced something like a rollercoaster ride when their plane took evasive action
By Meggie Lu
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Aug 16, 2008, Page 2
The Aviation Safety Council (ASC) yesterday concluded a 21-month investigation of a midair incident over South Korea between Taiwanese and Thai passenger aircraft, and said that both the Taiwanese pilot and the South Korean air traffic controller were at fault.
The incident occurred on Nov. 16, 2006, when Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) flight EF306, which was flying to South Korea, made an abrupt midair dive in order to avoid another passenger plane, Thai Airways (TA) flight TG659.
The maneuver resulted in 20 passengers and crew suffering injuries, said the ASC’s director of accident investigation, James Fang (方粵強).
Passengers would have been able to avoid injury had they been wearing their seat belts at the time of the plane’s sudden descent, Fang said.
“The near-collision was the result of a chain of events,” said the director of the ASC’s investigation laboratory, Michael Guan.
TOO CLOSE
As the FAT and the TA aircraft were too close to each other, the traffic advisory (TA) signal on both planes was triggered, Guan said.
At about this time, the controller at Incheon International Airport made several vital mistakes.
Initially he gave flight EF306 contradictory instructions and then referred to the plane as “EF308,” Guan said.
“The controller later said that because he was busy trying to find a plane that had disappeared off his radar screen, and since he was the only person tracking both incidents, his hands were tied,” he said.
Without clarifying the instruction, and with the auto-pilot turned off in response to the TA signal, the FAT pilot, upon seeing the resolution advisory alarm triggered, failed to obey the traffic collision advisory system (TCAS) on his plane and put the aircraft into a nosedive, Guan said.
“Making a decision based solely on visual data is against protocol … the pilot later claimed that he had seen a shadow above him, which was why he descended, however later analysis confirmed that there was no object near his plane; he should have followed TCAS advice and gradually descended,” he said.
Though the pilot only dipped the plane for four seconds, the aircraft plummeted a total of 2,400 feet (730m) in 17 seconds because of the acceleration, he said.
To the passengers inside the plane, the experience was similar to riding a rollercoaster, he said.
To avoid future aviation safety mishaps, the ASC has formulated several guidelines.
STAFF LEVELS
The council suggested that Incheon International Airport increase staff levels at its air traffic control center, that pilots as well as controllers use professional language when communicating and that the public be made aware of the importance of wearing seat belts during flights.
“In many air accidents we found that those passengers who were injured almost always did not have their seat belts on, whereas those who wore seatbelts had a much better chance of coming out uninjured,” he said.