Condor A320 received terrain alert during collision avoidance
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Condor A320 received terrain alert during collision avoidance
- 31 AUGUST, 2018
- SOURCE: FLIGHT DASHBOARD
- BY: DAVID KAMINSKI-MORROW
- LONDON
The aircraft had taken off from Kavala airport, on a service to Munich, when it its crew received a collision-avoidance system instruction to climb.
French investigation authority BEA, citing Greek counterparts, states that the aircraft had been passing 2,650ft at the time of the alert.
The crew responded to the order but, as the A320 passed through 2,770ft, the collision-avoidance system issued a different instruction, telling the crew to descend.
As the pilots followed the new order, the aircraft descended through 2,450ft and this subsequently triggered a terrain alert from the ground-proximity warning system.
The crew then executed a terrain escape manoeuvre, says BEA.
Kavala is situated on the coast with a ridge of terrain on its northern flank, with peaks rising to 2,000-3,000ft in the vicinity of the aircraft’s flightpath. BEA says the lowest critical altitude, during the critical phases of flight, was 2,529ft.
BEA describes the 16 August incident as “serious” but says no-one was injured. It identifies the A320 involved as D-AICD, which Flight Fleets Analyzer lists as a CFM International CFM56-powered airframe.
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interesting case as normally descent RAs are inhibited below 1100ft AGL . Nearly all the previous past cases where it did not work were traced to faulty radar altimeter data. The investigation will answer that one . .
Could be the system working properly. TCAS, as far as I know, only receives a “dumb” radalt input and won’t be looking ahead at terrain. EGPWS, on the other hand, is predictive. Could be the TCAS was obeying its rules correctly based on radalt info from directly below the aircraft while the EGPWS was also working correctly and looking ahead at rising terrain.
Interesting incident.
Interesting incident.
