Planes put on collision course at Reagan National

[myboynoah]

Two planes taking off from National put on collision course with plane trying to land

But an approaching storm caused a significant wind shift, and the air traffic control center in Warrenton wanted to reverse the flow of planes into the airport, turning them north of Rosslyn and routing them south along the river to land from the opposite direction.

The Warrenton controllers communicated the plan to the controller tower at National.

“The tower agreed, but they didn’t pass it on to all the people they needed to pass it on to,” said a federal official familiar with the incident who was not authorized to speak publicly.

As a result, an incoming flight that had been cleared to land was flying head-on at two planes that had just taken off. The inbound plane and the first of the outbound planes were closing the 1.4 miles between them at a combined speed of 436 mph, a rate that meant they were about 12 seconds from impact when the tower controller recognized her mistake.

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“Are you with me?” the tower controller asked the inbound pilot, checking to see whether he was tuned to her radio frequency. When the pilot acknowledged her, she ordered him to make an abrupt turn to the south to avoid the other two planes.

“We were cleared [for landing] at the river there,” the pilot said after breaking off the approach northwest of the airport. “What happened?”

After a pause, the controller said, “Stand by, we’re trying to figure this out.”

As she directed him to make a loop around the airport for a second landing attempt the pilot cautioned: “We really don’t have enough fuel here for this. We have to get on the ground pretty quick.”

[Uncle Ted]

News of the sleeping controller at National last year led to the revelation that controllers on overnight shifts at several other airports were napping on the job. The FAA suspended or fired several controllers for sleeping on the job last year, and the controversy contributed to the ouster of the head of the FAA’s air traffic control organization.

Another incident involving National Airport drew attention to errors made by controllers. In 2010, an airliner carrying Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) swerved to avoid another jet when the planes got so close that an onboard collision avoidance system was activated.

The FAA said that it recorded 1,234 operational errors in fiscal 2009 and that the number jumped to 1,887 in 2010, although there were more than a million fewer flights that year. The overwhelming majority of those incidents in which controllers allowed planes to get to close to one another did not put passengers at risk, but there were enough more-serious events that the National Transportation Safety Board stepped in to review them.

One that the safety agency scrutinized was a relatively minor mistake involving a plane with first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president, onboard.

Other cases the NTSB reviewed were more serious: A Boeing 737 nearly hit a helicopter while taking off from Houston; a Boeing 777 skimmed under a small plane on takeoff from San Francisco; a Boeing 737 nearly collided with a Cessna in Burbank, Calif.; an Airbus 319 passed 100 feet above the path of a Boeing 747 taking off in Anchorage; and an Embraer 135 taking off from Chicago took evasive action to avoid an in-bound twin-engine prop plane.

This article isn't helping me feel better about flying.

[calicoug]

This article isn't helping me feel better about flying.

Imagine what the list would look like if you were talking about driving instead.

[frank ryan]

This article isn't helping me feel better about flying.

Ted it is just fallout over the extended lunch breaks all the John Galt folks are taking to help CFA. Too many rational and capable people have left us poor decision makers on our own. I hope this doesn't impact the economy.

[myboynoah]

Cool graphic showing the progression of events with some pretty cool audio as well

[wuapinmon]

This happened to me in June 1992 coming into Detroit. We touched down and 1/2 second later he gunned it and we lifted off again. There was a small commuter plane turning onto our runway and he had eyeballed it, probably saving several if-not-all of our lives in the process.

Ever since then I get serious knots in my stomach and get really anxious before I fly.

[Clark Addison]

This happened to me in June 1992 coming into Detroit. We touched down and 1/2 second later he gunned it and we lifted off again. There was a small commuter plane turning onto our runway and he had eyeballed it, probably saving several if-not-all of our lives in the process.

Ever since then I get serious knots in my stomach and get really anxious before I fly.

I was on a small commuter prop plane up in Washington back in 1996 that was shaking violently, and every time it did there were noises like it was falling apart, and the flaps flew all over the place. I am pretty sure that had I not sat there for 30 minutes clenching every single muscle in my body, while at the same time staring at the wing and willing it to stay together, the plane would have disintegrated in mid-air, hurling all 12 of us on board to the ground in a state of consciousness until we were impaled on some peak in the Cascades.

So I credit myself for that one.

[YOhio]

They need Metron Aviation.

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