Virgin gets too close to Finns for comfort

[luoto]

Finnish media is reporting (in Swedish) a Virgin aircraft got involved in an airprox with a Finnair domestic flight. No big deal. No deaths. Slightly brown trousers maybe but what made me wonder was why would the flight levels cross so much as wouldn't the big iron be a lot higher than the "crop dusters" and such that Finnair uses (yes, I fly on them and they do the job as a taxi quite well) so such an incident wouldn't be likely.

The flight was from Kittilä (KTT) to Helsinki (HEL) and the incident happened a tad south of Jyväskylä (JKL) when the Finnair plane had to descend when 'suddenly' it was discovered that there was 150m separation instead of a reported minimum of 300m (it doesn't say whether it was vertical or horizontal separation, but I guess/hope it was vertical!)

The report suggests that Virgin got too close to Finnair instead of the other way around but that could be media speculation.

Finnair's PR bloke said that such things could happen about once a year and it isn't so dangerous because of the in-air warning systems even though the media headline claims it was a 'dangerous' situation.

Finnairplan i farlig situation
30.10.2002 09.26

(Source YLE News in Swedish)

Ett Finnairplan på väg från Kittilä till Helsingfors utsattes i går för en farlig situation. Planet var söder om Jyväskylä då det tvingades sänka höjd när ett brittiskt Virgin-plan befann sig för nära. Avståndet mellan planen var 150 meter i höjdled då det borde ha varit minst 300 meter. Ombord på planet fanns 25 passagerare. Finnairs kommunikationsdirektör Christer Haglund berättar att liknande situationer inträffar ungefär en gång per år, men att det egentligen inte är farliga situationer eftersom flygplanens varningssystem alarmerar piloterna och situationen då åtgärdas. Finnair överlåter nu undersökningen av väjningen till olycksutredningscentralen.

[akerosid]

Finland is a deceptively large country, despite its small population; Kitiila to HEL is 509mi (ABZ-LHR is 402) and all AY flights on this route are shown as either 32X or MD80, so a pretty high flight level could be expected.

I'm presuming that the other aircraft was a VS 340, operating to/from SHA/NRT?

[luoto]

"Finland is a deceptively large country, despite its small "

...tell me about it :)

"population; Kitiila to HEL is 509mi (ABZ-LHR is 402) and all AY "

I just didn't expect them to use such a high flight-level for internal flights, particularly with all of this open space, leaving the higher levels for the passing through traffic. At times when I fly HEL-KOK v v they garble through the atrocious ATR-72's PA something about flight levels but I thought I heard either 22k or 27k-ft but the PA is so bad to hear and the pilots invariably are less confident in Swedish and English compared to Finnish that it is a struggle to make out a lot ;)

"I'm presuming that the other aircraft was a VS 340, operating to/from SHA/NRT?"
I don't know. Sorry. But Virgin doesn't fly that many routes east-bound from what I can remember so your estimate is a good possibility.