Gatwick Airport plane (allegedly) lands without clearance
 

Oh oh.

Commander of aircraft makes decision.

This will never do!

Why didn't he use the "Say again over tower, that last transmission was garbled" :hmm:

Ummm one can understand where the confusion might have started from ;)

"Commander of aircraft makes decision whilst possibly not in possession of all the facts required to safely come to a different decision than the controller"
Chapeau.
We don't generally send em round for fun and it certainly might not be for what appears to be the obvious reason. I'm all for the pilot having a say now and again but when the man (or woman) in the tall pointy office says "go around", if I was down the back I'd much rather you did.
Ta Muchly
An ATCO

Perhaps they were afraid of failing the 2-engined go-around manoeuvre which has downed so many recently?

Tea, no biscuits asap in the office!

Vlad...

Is it clear the crew understood e.g. via read back, the "GA" instruction?

Certainly "up the road" a late landing clearance is preceded by the ATCO starting a transmission (to prevent others cutting in), speaking slowly, and giving e.g. the wind. Once you hear this you are "anticipating" a "Clear Land", and understand if the ATCO is just waiting until the aircraft ahead has technically vacated.

The trouble with this is if the ATCO changes his mind (as appears to have happened here) he thinks he has clearly told the aircraft to "GA" - but at that late stage there can be so many audio alerts (e.g. Rad Alt calls, "Minimums", "Retard") you don't clearly here what has been said.

Rather worrying to see NATS decide to publicise this and "get their side of the story" in via the press, rather than let an MOR/ASR process learn the lessons :sad:

Sorry Vlad, disagree with you there.

The Captain must think about the safety of his aircraft, and if he (she) thinks that is best served by ignoring an order from ATC then so be it.

After all, the chap in the tall pointy office, isn't attached the the large pointy plane, traveling very fast.

In this case, ATC issued a Go Around order, and the Captain elected to ignore it. Let's find out why before we roundly condemn the guy.

If there was a reason, this story would never have made the media.

The incident happened during the hours of darkness. That being the case, the controller could not issue a "land after" clearance. Therefore, if the runway was still occupied, a go-around was the only option available.

I'm certainly not condemning anybody. I'm merely providing some early devil's advocacy. I'd be very disappointed if the firm had issued some kind of press release in advance of the MOR landing on the doormat of SRG. I'm sure all will be explained.
My point was just that whilst I totally accept that the men (or women, aren't I inclusive today?) in pointy hats bear the ultimate responsibility when things go tits up and as such always have the final say.....There are so many things besides the obvious that could make the ATCO call a go around. At the end of the day a missed approach is a standard procedure practiced often so why would you put yourself and slf into a situation of potentially unquantified risk rather than the tried and tested missed approach, ask why later?
I'm not aiming this comment at this particular incident as I don't have the foggiest what actually occurred. I don't doubt that all concerned did what they thought was best at the time.

Jonty, if that was the case then they probably wouldnt have acknowledged the GA but said something to the effect that they were ignoring the instruction and landing.

I suspect its more likely to be that the wind readout caused the crew to anticipate a "Clear Land" instruction and at the end of a sector during a period of high workload and the PF was expecting to hear 'clear land' so his brain heard 'clear land' but their mouth read-back the go around on autopilot (pun not intended but happily coincidental)

I know CRM is supposed to mitigate this but if PNF was distracted by one of any-number of tasks then he may have missed the call and if they've, for whatever reason, not challenged PF or ATC to confirm for crew co-ordination then you can see how it could happen.

Nigel on Draft, I imagine someone listening in alerted the media who then approached NATS for comment.

One of the best "wave off" (go around) calls I ever got was from tower at NAS Norfolk when a C-9 gooned up a taxi instruction and turned onto the runway I was lined up for, short final from a GCA with not great weather. I never saw the C-9, only learned of it later from ATC.

When tower calls go around (or wave off in that case) I bet most crews would simply go around as a reflex.

Will be interesting to find out what made this case play out as it did.

As many have said already before : let's see the facts :
what about this scenario:
Go around, PF applied Full power , resulting in a master warning and horns &bells, PM said , runway is clear now. What would you do, retard and land or persist in a go around ?
I know what I would do.

Not saying this is what happenned, but there are sometimes good reasons for ignoring a go around instruction from ATC....

ATC watcher: possible scenario, but far fetched.

Not the first time by any means. I was at the hold at LGW on the day an orange airline introduced their new airbus into service. He was still on approach frequency and landed anyway without clearance. Rather sheepishly came up on tower as he taxied.
Most of us are still human.

just wondering when a tower issued GA is purely a warning and when is it a command ?

The prang at KASE comes to mind in light of this incident

Well, here's a pretty specific description of the event.

Just for emphasis I'll reiterate...

and

Regardless of "expectations" after receiving "landing weather reports" and other such bunkum the crew were apparently instructed to Go Around. In my (admittedly limited) 15 yrs in UK London aviation I've never heard an ATC instruction to G/A given in other than an utterly authoratative, unmistakable form, typically, "Silverbird 123 GO AROUND!, I SAY AGAIN! GO AROUND!"

This isn't missable, it isn't mistakable, it isn't ignorable.

:mad: to what the Capt thinks he can see in front of him. How does he know what the instruction refers to? It could perfectly well be something out of his view or awareness. It's either a complete fool or a very self confident chancer that ignores such an instruction.

and will be required to justify his decision afterwards. Good luck fella....:(

@ ATC Watcher - what would I do? Just like I've done in real life. After minimums lost sight of the runway at EGE. Started go-around. Pitch and power. As the nose is rotating up FO is leaning forward and says "there it is!"
"Too late, we're on the go, F20, PRGU", verify LNAV, VNAV, and away we go.


Applying TOGA doesn't result in all sorts of master warnings, horns and bells. If you pull the landing gear up quickly you can get a momentary configuration horn that is heard on almost every G/A.