LH E195 took off without clearance at BRU
 

Happened last week.
Embraer was lined-up at 07R while a Shamrock A320 was on final for 01 already clear to land.
Embraer began its take-off into the path of the A320 which went around. Sounds pretty close..


http://www.jacdec.de/WP/wp-content/u..._MAP1small.png

I am not saying this was the case, but it happened to me years ago at ORY. A similar runway layout. An Indian B747 freighter (I think) started to roll as I was short finals. The cause was a wrong change of frequency from ground to departure. They checked in on departure, who without confirmation of position, cleared them to an intermediate FL. So off they went rumbling down the runway. The human links in the chain are guaranteed at some point to prove weaker than required.

<<They checked in on departure, who without confirmation of position, cleared them to an intermediate FL.>>

Assuming it was a radar controller who cleared them to climb, he expects an aircraft to be airborne when it makes contact. I've seen it happen but I still find it unbelievable that an experienced pilot would do it.

yeah its unbelievable that an experienced pilot would make a simple if huge mistake. it hardly ever happens. i was a fo lined up on rwy 1 at msy back in the day when either the chief pilot of the airline or I ( i cant remember which) stopped the takeoff roll after power application with the simple question "do we have a clearance?" not a takeoff clearance, we had that. a clearance clearance. we didnt have that. im pretty sure he was experienced and i was in a dc 9 so i had at least three years experience. how did that happen? we both eventually completed successful, and happily uneventful, 30 plus year careers.

There is no approach so smooth and so sweet that it can't be waved off, for whatever reason. Good job, A320 crew, and good job tower to see "something wrong" and call the wave off. How that other aircraft got this wrong, will hopefully come out in an incident report, and aren't we all glad that this did not become an accident report? I am.


EDIT: Corrected who spotted error, thank you what next, I obviously did not read with sufficient attention to detail.

costalpilot, was that in the middle of the night?

They didn't see that something was wrong, but the tower controller (or rather his software) did and he told them to go around. Honor whom honor due!

Why do you put " LH " in the headline? It's not quite right.

It was an Air Dolomiti Embraer. That company is from Italy and flying wet-lease for Lufthansa City line.

So all they have is a lufthansa callsign.

I think that was the point.

Air Dolomiti wholly owned by Lufthansa, main base Munich.

nope

we didnt fly then

come to think of it, in my late 50's, flying in the middle of the night in SE asia, i dont remember any kind of mistake approaching that one, when i was in my early 30's, first flight of the day, flying with one of the great captains of my youth.

just goes to show, imo.

Amadis...

From the report:

OCCURENCE DATASET
Date: 2016-10-05 Time: 20:40
Location: EBBR BRU Brussels Airport
Country: Belgium
Flight phase: APR – Initial Approach (IFR), Final Approach, all Circuit Patterns, Missed Approach/Go-Around

:mad: happens. The " line up and wait" was introduced after Tenerife, but as we see here it does not solve 100% of the problems. The alarms on the Ground surface movements radars were generalized after Linate. Good to see the system worked here.
Also good professional handling by the TWR controller , if the R/T transcript provided in the jadec file is authentic and complete of course.

I've always wondered why are airports designed with crisscrossing runways like this, especially when they are being used simultaneously. I know answers are going be to because of winds, space, maybe surrounding terrain etc., but this kind of set up seems to promote this kind of possible conflict. What procedures are in place to avoid such?

A few US airports have the runway ststus light system and FAROS. Is it in use in Europe? It's not bullet-proof, but I image it would help.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/

http://rwsl.ll.mit.edu/pdf/FAROS_DFW...ing_OpEval.pdf

A recording of the ATC has appeared on YouTube. Obviously, I can't confirm it is unedited.

http://youtu.be/rWR9ucU9eUg

Welcome to the 21st century.
That said, this recording makes more sense , but is different from the one published earlier. Just to point this out, especially when attempting to pass judgement on preliminary unofficial info.

Is that recoding typical of the audio quality of ATC?

If yes, then I can see how mistakes can happen, I'm amazed anybody can understand that real-time.

Not taking off without a clearance?
Listening to other traffic on the frequency?



I have never seen this in Europe. But can't this create an additional threat by mistaking the red lights going out for a clearance? Obviously you shouldn't, but many pilots only fly to the US once in a while. Combine an unfamiliar lighting system with fatigue, and mistakes might happen.

The youtube video cites LiveAtc.net as source; the audio will have been recorded from a volunteer's scanner in line of site of the airport.

It is reasonable to assume both pilots and the ATC would have had much better audio from equipment that is designed for ground aircraft communications.