A Heathrow bound airliner carrying 232 passengers narrowly avoided a mid-air collision just 4,000ft over London as a business jet was forced to take urgent avoiding action, a report by accident investigators revealed today.

The near miss happened when a German-owned Citation 525 business jet passed 100ft to 200ft below the Turkish Airlines’ Boeing 777 passenger plane in the skies over the capital, said the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

The passenger plane had failed to follow commands from three collision-avoidance warnings which alert pilots in the cockpit automatically to danger when aircraft get too close.

Investigators  said that if the weather had been bad the Citation would not have been able to see the Boeing and would therefore not have been able to take effective avoiding action.

The drama in the skies happened after the business plane was cleared by the air traffic control tower at London City Airport to climb to 3,000ft.

But the crew mistook the instruction and stated that the aircraft would be climbing to 4,000ft – a ‘readback’ error which was not picked up by the London City tower controller.

At the same time, the Heathrow-bound passenger jet had been cleared to descend to 4,000ft. It was at this height that it passed the Citation, which had two crew and one passenger aboard.

The small German-owned plane was just half a mile away from the jet and only 100ft to 200ft below it.

Source : Daily Mail

Bookmark It