Flypast tower for visual inspection - who has camera?
 

Something I have been wondering about for sometime.

I have seen on occasions aircraft asking for a flypast of a tower for a visual inspection underneath if they have undercarriage problems or anything else that someone might visually be able to assist checking out if the aircraft was to fly past the tower.

In these rare incidents do any of the major airports and their ATC units have videoing or camera facilities to capture pictures of the aircraft as it passes so engineers/tech can get a look at the pictures in detail and decide what to do? This is assuming the aircraft has enough fuel to hold while decisions and advice is sought.

I once had a situation where a medium cargo aircraft went around because of a suspect undercarriage problem, at night!!.
Captain asked for a fly by for visual inspection, obviously aware of the difficulties.
Fortunately I happened to be working a very nice police man at the time and asked if he, his heli and night vision camera could position themselves north of the runway to assist. Job done. Able to say to cargo A/C that everything appears normal. A/c subsequently landed safely.
To answer your question as far as I am aware the situation you describe would be very unlikely, since you can only say "Well it looks OK but I cannot be 100% certain".
If on the other hand you saw something that looked odd, you would put on the appropriate category of emergency, probably A/C accident imminent, wait for services to arrive then get the said A/C in.

Just me, and a pair of bins I'm afraid. Like airac says - "Well, it looks OK"

I believe BAW don't allow for such flypasts in their SOPs anymore due to the fact that whilst ATCOs/ATSAs see a lot of aircraft day in day out, we're not qualified to say what we are/aren't looking at.

Although they are long out of commission, we still have the lights fitted astride the runway for that very purpose.

It's often possible to rustle up an engineer into the tower who can use the bins..........and then tell the crew "Well, it looks OK".

I worked an inbound just recently who only had 2 greens, believed to be a bulb fault (as it subsequently turned out to be). However, the crew accepted the offer of a low approach and go-around for a look from the ground. ATC, Airfield ops and the fire service all looked and all passed on that everything appeared normal. Of course there's no way of knowing about downlock or other problems, but the crew know that; it's just so we can point out when something is obviously wrong such as one gear leg not fully extended, nosewheel turned at 90 degrees to where it should be, wheel missing etc. Fortunately bulb faults are much more common than the other stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A video camera's an excellent idea, especially for the board of inquiry afterwards....but I've never heard of a tower having one.
The fire service can help out at night with their spotlights, otherwise it's the bins during daylight and where I work, they’re equivalent to the Christmas cracker variety. Was once at a unit that had NVGs – now that was useful for spotting deer on the runway.

I know of at least 3 military airfields that have vidoe/still cameras to record incidents, undercarriage check lights are also common for the mil.

Pie

I wonder if the RAF still use the term "AUGLE" - Aircraft Undercarriage Ground Lighting Equipment. A few sodium lights mounted in the grass between the Tower and the Runway, pointing skywards. Of dubiuos use for nightime undercarriage checks, but a good excuse for a low fly past ..... er sorry, QFI/Student demo! ;)

Happens a few times a year at zzzz . everyone looks out the window and it's ' looks ok' 99% of the time. Extremely rare that anything appears wrong.
as for a camera, we've been trying to get the company to spend on a decent pair of binoculars for years so....

You Mean Like This !!!
 

We have undercarriage check lights (UCLS as we know them) at our airfield alongside the tower which can provide illumination for a night time gear / flap check etc. We also have a video camera readily available but that is more to assist the subsequent board of inquiry should it ever be needed rather than provide real time technical assistance. If there is sufficient time, we would request aircrew / engineer assistance in the tower, although as has been said already, in the majority of these cases ATc staff can indicate that gear flap etc appears to be down / up as the case may be. We also had NVG binos until last year when the inventory holder suddenly realised their replacement value and promptly removed them!

I remember having read a story about a fixed-gear Cessna happily taking off from some airfield, and later been told by the en-route FIS that they'd received a call from his departure airfield, that they found some bits of his gear on the runway.

From the cockpit, no visual verification was possible, so he declared an emergency, went to a controlled field, did the flypast and four guys in the tower, with binoculairs all confirmed they saw all the gear as it was supposed to be. Very cautious landing with the rescue services standing by. A greaser.

Turned out the bits were from another Cessna, who had a mighty interesting arrival.

In my time in the Mil, initially we had "Flares Ground Indicating" (FGIs) that were laid out in a pattern in front of the Tower before night flying, in case a Landing Gear check was required during the evenings' excitement. These were lit by an AATC (ATSA) with a 'portfire' on the ATCO's instuction at the moment critique as the 'distressed' aircraft initiated his fly through; timing was all important as the FGIs burned for about 3 mins and they all had to be lit (which took about 3 minutes!) to get enough light to illuminate the underside of the aircraft as it flashed through. Saw it done once and it worked, surprisingly enough.
FGIs were replaced by UCLS later, which was far more convenient. However, it was drummed into me at Strawberry that the only thing that could be reported over the RT was "Your landing gear (meaning the whole thing) APPEARS down and locked" or "Your port undercarriage (meaning the specific element) APPEARS unlocked (or the like). This would seem to be an early example of individuals' @rse covering before the days of serious litigation.