The Day Britain Stopped
 

TONIGHT BBC2, 2100hrs BST

A powerful TV drama is being shown on Beeb 2 tonight about a ficticious event in the future, 19th December 2003 when Britian is paralysed by transport meltdown.

Included in this program as the "aviation" component is a midair collision over Hounslow (east of LHR) between a pax airliner and a "Czech" freighter.... mmmm.
An26 perhaps?

The collision is due to an overworked terminal controller making the "wrong" decision during a go-around and causing 2x aircraft to collide.

It will be interesting to see how facutal/detailed this inactment will be.

The author is said to be an advisor of the Civil Aviation Authority and senior ATC body saying it is an accident waiting to happen.

Extra news in depth on the BBC web-page.

Should be an amusing watch, but itsn't Britain on the verge of a transport network melt down every single day!

I can't stand public transport! Last week I got a train from Newcastle to London, day return, it cost the company £172. I couldn't beleive it! :\

TRAINS
 

Meltdown
I suppose your right - trains cancelled, engineering work over running, derailed rolling stock.....

Yes trains are diabolical in the UK, I agree.
Apex tickets do tend to be cheaper in advance of course but on the day tickets are EXTORTIONATE, London to Sheffield fares are around the £90 GBP mark!!
Reliability not that good either.

SunderlandMatt, thats because companies like to waste money. You can do Newcastle-London for £81.40

SunderlandMatt, it's also the fare given automatically to people from Sunderland when buying a ticket at Central Station!

I suppose they will be telling us that this is "reality" television again!

Why do the luvvy duvvies have to indulge in all this scare mongering and put the fear of God into the travelling public?

This is in the future when TCAS has been removed from aircraft because it hasn't stopped any aircraft banging into each other.

It must have been along time since he retired, this 'advisor' chappie'.

..."Why do the luvvy duvvies have to indulge in all this scare mongering and put the fear of God into the travelling public?"
Well said Bob !

In my opinion the makers of this are are a bunch of prats who have contributed nothing to society.

For the record; here is BA's sensible response

BBC2 will broadcast tonight at 9pm a mock documentary drama entitled "The
Day Britain Stopped".

The programme depicts a day of transport gridlock in Britain. The story
line includes a national rail strike, congested motorways and a fictional
mid air collision over Hounslow caused by errors made by air traffic
controllers. One of the aircraft involved is in British Airways' colours.

It is important to stress that this programme is fictional and we do not
endorse its content.

The airline was not approached either to take part in the programme or
indeed give permission to use British Airways branding.

In the programme there is no suggestion of fault on the part of British
Airways in relation to the mid-air crash. We have urged the BBC, however,
to make clear the fictional basis of the programme and to ensure that it is
not misleading by implication.

The broadcast of the programme comes at a particularly unhelpful time for
an industry already facing a number of major challenges.

We have made clear to the BBC's senior management that the safety of
British Airways customers and staff is always our utmost priority.

Plus, we regard UK air traffic controllers as among the finest and most
professional anywhere in the world and we have the utmost confidence in
them.

The Beeb have a website up about this programme, here:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ed/default.stm

There's a forum for making comments on the programme, and it's here:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ed/2989691.stm

Ah, scaremongery. Got to love it...

Like Many who have watched this this evening it was a powerful program. Like it or hate it is a program that should be given its support as I believe that it is something that should raise important discussion, both in the CAA NATS and BALPA.

Although I dispair that it may play into the hands of the NIMBYS. I do wonder if it was directed by those who support the anti Air groups around Heathrow.

One might applaud it for raising serious issues if only it had not has so many factual inaccuracies in areas that I know about - I can only assume is was equally inaccurate and misleading in other areas also.

As a non pilot I must ask why conflict alarms in the tower and TCAS would not have prevented this scenerio? Or did the BBC 'forget' about them?

Why did a flight from Heathrow to Bilbao turn left after take-off from 09R?

Airclues

I thing words like "point" and "missing the" come into play here.

Are we fannying about with detail, or are we saying this could never happen.

Excatly Airclues!! The whole program was based on a total falsehood - that a 09R departure would just turn left.

I wondered that myself...

The biggest omission that I could see was the absence of TCAS. Whilst the events over the German/Swiss border last summer prove it is not the be all and end all, it is definitely a major cotributor to safety after all else fails.

I guess it was ignored to make the programme more shocking.

Unfortunately Joe Public will believe everything they saw tonight.
Extremely poor timing by the 'beeb' showing this at the moment. Talk about kicking an industry when it's already on it's knees.
As mentioned before, the researching leaves something to be desired.:mad:

Hello all,

As a better than averagely informed civilian I am dismayed at the responses given here by those "in the industry".

The "everything is alright" attitude coupled with "how dare anyone question us" allied to the "no whistle blowers allowed" is what is wrong with this country and is what the whole point of the programme

I mean I am sure there are "inaccuracies" in the minutiae of the program but the point is the same.

I work in an industry "on its knees". Why should the aviation industry have special treatment? Every other industry has it tough. I hate to hear the aviation industry bleating as if they have some god given right to omnipotence.

I will disagree with you here Bill, as I have done in the ATC Forum

This programme was sensationalist rubbish. I watched it because we had been "warned" about it at work, and I expected that NATS had over reacted. how wrong I was. ATCOs unable to contact the tower because they were busy getting a Shamrock off the runway? No Go Around alarms? Heathrow ATCOs could get to work but LTCC ATCOs couldn't? Final Director bandboxed? bandboxed with who for God's sake?

Which bit REALLY got to me? The sight of an ATCO led away from TC by the police. I am certain that would NOT have happened as shown.

Must say, I am impressed that you can land two burning aircraft on Hounslow and only have a handful of fatalities on the ground, although most of the shots of the wreckage (1 mile from Heathrow) were actually filmed in neighbouring Ealing. Should have hit Heston/Cranford.

Total nonsense.

As for Newsnight - fair play to the professor of Transport (or whatever) who rubbished the entire programme. But who was that so called Aviation Expert? I would love to know why he is EX CAA...and if he has a personal axe to grind - because that's how it appeared to me.

Nobody is asking for special treatment for the aviation industry, all we are asking is that programmes are accurate. This one blatantly is not. It is interesting to see BAs response as posted earlier. NATS had a similar response to the BBC, but as I understand it, the makers have not entered in to dialogue with "us"


Captain Airclues - thanksw - I hadn't noticed the left turning Spain-bound flight...I was too busy wondering why Heathrow was so busy with outbounds when nobody could get to the airport!


Chips
Hounslow Resident, and certainly not a NATS Cheerleader

Having just watched this, I'm very disappointed with the BBC.

Inaccuracies abounded, big and small, in a dangerous mix of fact and fiction. One might point out that BA doesn't fly its own metal to Bilbao from LHR (although it does have a codeshare with IB on the route); and that CSA doesn't operate freight-only flights into LHR, as far as I'm aware. Perhaps these were intentional errors; perhaps they were simply lazy. Who knows - the programme makers didn't seem to care.

Then there was the missed approach. No mention of the role of TCAS in preventing such incidents (too complicated for the viewer, perhaps?) Also no idea of why the CSA pilot veered onto the active runway during go around - not something which has happened to me on the many go-arounds I've been involved with as a SLF.

Yes, mid-air collisions have happened elsewhere and could happen in London. But to put forward such a loopy premise for one led me, as another correspondent has written, to question the research behind the entire programme.

Still, the Daily Mail will love it - it makes for better copy than things that are actually dangerous to your health (such as, er, the Daily Mail...)

[Edited for syntax]