Land without clearance
 

Without going into too many specifics: Large international A/P - parallel runways (2), 1 for departures, 1 for arrivals (at the time - arrivals not busy), separate tower freqs., inbound airplane switched to tower as instructed but missed contacting tower. Landed no clearance. For sure crew dropped the ball, but what about tower (no contact)?


Your thoughts? :ouch:

If the inbound could not establish contact with the tower he should have reverted to the previous frequency. Not eminently sensible to land without clearance.

Further explanation - airplane DID NOT attempt to contact tower - as in 'overlooked', 'forgot'.......

Once landed at EWR without landing clearance it was 3.00am and the approach guy was as surprised as we were that it happened no repercussions ....happily

Done it once, in the sandbox after an all-nighter, daylight and good viz.
Forgot to switch, no jail time, no nothing.

Happens fairly regularly for various reasons. Risk is if ATC think that if no comms then the aircraft will definitely go-around. It might not.

Was in the F/D of BAW B757 at AMS many moons ago when we took off without ATC clearance. Informed by ATC after take-off. Embarrassed apologies to the tower to which he replied, "I was monitoring you and would soon have stopped you if I would have had to". Slightly different scenario since we were of course on the correct frequency. I would assume that in this particular case the TWR would have been monitoring the arrival and, failing to have contact, ensured a clear runway.

This happened to me with a BEA Viscount at Aberdeen in the 70s. I was on Tower, the BEA was transferred to me by APP at the ADN. I know that it was because the controller (Procedural) was sitting next to me. The pilot did not call me & I was intrigued to see when he would. There was no traffic to affect the a/c, so I didn't say anything & let it run.The pilot landed without a clearance to do so & made its first call to me clearing the r/w. I informed him of what had happened & he apologized. I reassured him that there was no real "incident" involved & safety had not been compromised. My concern was that he had learnt from the situation & would not let it happen again. I did not consider that anything was to be gained, in this case, from an official investigation.

So, in case like this: not intentional, no loss of comm, on proper freq., should / could / would one expect the tower to speak up and try to contact the inbound?


Not trying to place blame, just trying to better understand from a ground perspective.


And no, also not a 'huge deal', no one hurt, nothing damaged, no 'close call' - similar - notified after landing initial call up of 'no clearance.....' Drat!


Again, thanks for inputs!

There's always the possibility the pilot has some sort of problem and a call would distract the crew who are preparing for a 'dodgy' landing so provided safety is not compromised, I tend not to say anything until they actually land

Although I did not say anything until after the landing, this was largely due to my curiosity as to what the pilot would do & to see when he would call me. The longer this went on, the more I was reluctant to call him - although I could have, at any time, called him with a landing clearance. I suppose that would have been the more professional thing to do but, as chevvron says, there was the thought that something may have happened on the a/c & "interference" from the ground would have exacerbated the situation. Anyway, I took the view that to say nothing & see what developed was what I would do (as there was no traffic to adversely affect the a/c). As far as I know , "everybody lived happily ever after!" In general, nowadays, I would expect the TWR to attempt to contact the a/c with a landing clearance - if the pilot had not solicited one.

Controllers duty to show green lights and make blind transmission to land.period.

Fair point.

<<Controllers duty to show green lights>>

I suspect that at many airfields green lights are things of the distant past.

Green lights!!!! As the large A380 configures itself onto the ILS and the pilots continue to go through their landing checklist, they look out at the large 2 runway international airport, and see approach lights, taxiway lights, runway lights, strobes from taxiing aircraft, beacons flashing on the many ground vehicles moving around, headlights, not to mention street lights as the airport is surrounded by houses, and car headlights on the roads below.

But despite these many distractions our 2 super eagles eyed pilots spot a tiny steady green pin head of a light pointing directly towards them.

I guess we are cleared to land they say!!!!

It's another success story for ATC!!!

I wonder whether the ATIS message at EGPF is included 'just in case the aerodrome controller is busy vectoring stuff on the ATM', or is that just me being cynical?
Curious as to why it's included though.

Maybe only at Civilian ones.

Red and Green Aldis lamps and Verey flares still used by the Military! :ok:

As a tower controller I would transmit blind, instruct a colleague to use Aldis lamp (however insignificant that might be!) and also contact approach to get him/her to transmit blind the landing clearance. Would also prep the operations dept to have a "follow me" vehicle on standby to lead aircraft to stand.
If runway not usable, for whatever reason, I would consider turning off the runway & approach lights in order to dissuade pilot from landing...
(+transmitting blind, red Aldis lamp, getting approach to transmit blind)

Oh, and whilst the Aldis lamp has a lovely little target aiming sight I'm pretty sure it's not pinpoint accurate...you could always ask (if you're really bored!) on approach to get Tower to shine it at you...I'd be quite interested if it is obvious (or not) to you

I only ever had to use the Aldis Lamp once during 17 years of Aerodrome Control. Fortunately, someone was standing between me and the window I was aiming through.
"It's not working...You're not going out!" he said.
That was how we found out that the cleaning-lady unplugged both signal-lamps each morning, (after we had checked them at 0600L), to plug little 'Henry' in.
And no-one had noticed for about 2 years!

Interesting, I'd hazard a guess that we reach for it about once a month, and out of those about 99 times out of a hundred we work out who the arrival is talking to prior to touchdown

Well the Aldis lamp works well through green tinted windows, really well. Any spare colleagues available nowadays? Not in the modern world. And the paperwork now is even worse. What a wonderful time to be an ATCO!

I didn't say a "spare" colleague...not had one of those for a long time...but we tend to work as a team at my unit...don't you?
As for paperwork...for the jobbing ATCO I'd say it isn't particularly onerous?

Nimmer is right. AFAIK Aldis lamps were not at Heathrow during my time, going back to 1972. There were none where I worked abroad in the late 60s either. It must be a rare commodity now - well worth taking to Antiques Roadshow!

I'd be disappointed at any ATCO who just lets a non-speaking inbound run "just to see what happens" for a massive number of reasons. Whether it's to get a landing clearance onto the R/T (in case of tx failure on the a/c, thus saving a possible go-around followed by non-radio arrival procedure); to alert any vehicles or other a/c around the runway; trying to establish if there's any other problem the crew are dealing with and have just forgotten; just to confirm that there's somebody actually monitoring the arrivals; etc.

Or best case scenario....the runway's clear, the crew have simply forgotten, they land safely...then end up getting dobbed in, potentially into a world of trouble, when their mistake is pointed out on the frequency.

Utterly avoidable.

Agreed,

In today's world it would not be satisfactory to sit back and watch.

I would expect ATC to be doing everything possible to contact (whether by RT, datalink, light, signal squares, whatever) the aircraft.

It shouldn't be forgotten that if a modern aircraft is suffering a genuine radio failure, there's probably a lot more wrong with that airframe than mere radio problems.

These are fair points to consider. If I was still an ATCO I would have them right at the front of my thinking. When this happened the world, & aviation, was a lot simpler place. The essential point that I was trying to make was that in a very simple & non-critical situation, there was no need to rush off on reporting action. Everyone learnt from a friendly discussion, rather than being dragged over the coals. However, I do acknowledge the need to ascertain whether, or not, the a/c or crew have a problem; & to help to deal with it. In the case mentioned I was pretty certain that nothing was amiss - although, I do accept that I did not KNOW that to be a fact.
As I said, everyone learnt from it , & the points which have been made were part of that learning.

CHIRP has something to say on the subject. To paraphrase: it's a runway incursion, but pilot landing or going around could be critisized or praised either way; ATCO should transmit blind and use signals.

you should read the reports on the runway incursion at EGBB from a couple of years back. Make your toes curl it would! CAA prosecuted the pilot as well.

Had one acft land without a clearance a few years ago at a small airport. 5min before official air traffic service hours were due to end, night-time VMC, long day flying, tuned the radio to the wrong frequency & from the silence the crew assumed I had gone home early. Didn't broadcast on the military frequency coming in (which I was monitoring in order to get an idea of where they were- the joys of non-radar environments) nor follow unmanned joining procedures and flew straight in. Got quite a fright because the working position had my back to that particular final approach, saw the landing lights, sent out the fire & rescue assuming they had a radio failure. Pilot came up to the tower rather sheepishly after shutting down to apologise. Luckily no harm done, but definitely makes you think about the what-ifs...

So far as using an ALDIS ..I had a BA 757 land without clearance...he had set 118.1 instead of 118.3. We never heard from him when transferred from APP. I shone the ALDIS at him...transmitted blind...and he landed safely. It was a buggah of a job to convince him that he HAD a clearance to land.

KCockayne ...:ugh::ugh::ugh:

A couple things on this very fun subject:

30 years ago as a newly minted helicopter pilot, I flew a wrong course and ended up at a towered field thinking I was going to be landing at a non-tower field. About a mile from the tower, I crossed a large hill / small mountain, and saw the control tower. Oops. Since I didn't know where I was, I didn't know which frequency to use. Obviously with further experience I would have known to just give 121.5 a call, but being that I was well below the traffic pattern and there were lovely areas of grass all around the ramp area I elected to just land on the grass and shut down and figure everything out on the ground. Tower was a bit miffed and suggested I have a talk with my instructor, but still to this day I think that landing on the grass was probably a better idea than continuing around in the air while waiting for a light gun signal. Of course, knowing where I was would have been even better!

On the subject of light guns, in the past (at least in the US) light guns had a very wide beam which was very desaturated, i.e. sometimes it could be difficult to tell green from red from white. The "new" ones give a very very saturated green or red light, such that I doubt it's simply a filter in front of a light source. Very nice. The other change, however, is that the beam seems much more narrow, to the point that when tower is trying to hit us with the light gun, it appears to flicker when I know they are actually trying to give us a steady indication. When I practice this, I'm typically 1/2 mile from the tower... perhaps at further distance the beam spread will be larger and less likely to flicker, but I'm curious whether other people have commented on this? It seems like a steady beam could easily be confused with a flashing indication, i.e. tower means to give a steady green, but the pilot sees a flickering green and doesn't think that he's actually cleared to land. Comments?

Happened fairly regularly where I worked, maybe once per month. Normally just transmitted clearance in the blind, and never got too worked up over it. As said, completely different from someone who showed up on the runway without talking to approach or anyone else. Had the old light guns which were useless more than a mile away in daylight.

Did have one chap hauling checks who lost electrical system 200 miles out one night and forged on, no lights/radios/transponder or IFR clearance. About an hour after midnight, I cleared a DEA/Customs plane for TO and he replied "What about this Cessna on final" I about jumped out of my skin. No radar target, (very old radar on very old tower display), no lights, not visible to me in any way, but the pilots could see him from the threshold about to cross the fence. They followed him to the ramp and gave him a "special" welcome. Don't think he'll repeat that decision.

To be fair, if someone is radio fail I wouldn't necessarily expect them to follow the radio fail procedures. They can be quite complicated sometimes, especially for a private pilot flying alone who might not have much experience. At least with today's radar you can see them and keep everything out of their way :P

I've not used one in anger in many years but do still check it for serviceability every night shift. (The last real comms failure had the B737 pilot call me on his cell phone.)

They are very useful however for spotlighting while bunny hunting after hours at regional airports!:O