The growing threat of aircraft collisions on the ground
The burnt-out wreckage of a Japan Airlines plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport was a sobering reminder that many of aviation’s worst accidents happen on the ground rather than in the air. Safety investigators spent the week probing the sequence of events that led to a collision between the JAL Airbus A350 and a smaller coastguard turboprop aircraft as the former landed on the runway. All of the nearly 400 passengers and crew on board escaped the JAL plane, but five of the six-member coastguard team were killed. Japan Transport Safety Board’s investigation is running in parallel with a police probe into possible professional negligence. State broadcaster NHK reported on Friday that airport camera footage showed the coastguard plane may have erroneously been on the runway for as much as 40 seconds before the collision. Aviation safety experts cautioned against pre-empting the investigations’ findings, but they said the accident on Tuesday and a recent rise in near-misses highlighted the dangers passengers face while on the ground, and the need for improved alert systems to prevent deadly collisions. “Traffic is coming back, things are getting busier and runway surface areas at airports are complicated and complex, with many moving parts and interactions,” said Hassan Shahidi, CE of the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based non-profit which co-ordinated a December report calling for improvements to on-ground safety. “This is an area of concern and there needs to be an international effort to prevent it.” Collisions on the runway can be catastrophic. The deadliest commercial aviation accident occurred in 1977 when two Boeing 747 Jumbo jets collided on the runway at Tenerife airport amid confusion over clearances for take-off, killing 583 people. The disaster led to major changes to safety protocol, including clearer and standardised communications between control tower and cockpit. With strict standards to keep aircraft apart on the ground and in the sky, the aviation industry can boast an increasingly stellar safety record. But one former British Airways pilot said there remained a greater risk of problems on the ground than in the air. “It is a high workload environment, [where] you need to ramp up your attention to detail,” he said. Planes operate collision avoidance systems while they are airborne, but there is no universal “last line of defence” at airports, according to the FSF report. Modern aircraft are equipped with enhanced ground proximity warning systems that provide flight crews with timely and accurate information about potential conflicts with obstacles or terrain as they near the ground. But ground-based technology is “often cost-prohibitive and not scalable to deploy at thousands of airports”, it added.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-01-08/general/the-growing-threat-of-aircraft-collisions-on-the-ground
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/logo.png
The growing threat of aircraft collisions on the ground
The burnt-out wreckage of a Japan Airlines plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport was a sobering reminder that many of aviation’s worst accidents happen on the ground rather than in the air. Safety investigators spent the week probing the sequence of events that led to a collision between the JAL Airbus A350 and a smaller coastguard turboprop aircraft as the former landed on the runway. All of the nearly 400 passengers and crew on board escaped the JAL plane, but five of the six-member coastguard team were killed. Japan Transport Safety Board’s investigation is running in parallel with a police probe into possible professional negligence. State broadcaster NHK reported on Friday that airport camera footage showed the coastguard plane may have erroneously been on the runway for as much as 40 seconds before the collision. Aviation safety experts cautioned against pre-empting the investigations’ findings, but they said the accident on Tuesday and a recent rise in near-misses highlighted the dangers passengers face while on the ground, and the need for improved alert systems to prevent deadly collisions. “Traffic is coming back, things are getting busier and runway surface areas at airports are complicated and complex, with many moving parts and interactions,” said Hassan Shahidi, CE of the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based non-profit which co-ordinated a December report calling for improvements to on-ground safety. “This is an area of concern and there needs to be an international effort to prevent it.” Collisions on the runway can be catastrophic. The deadliest commercial aviation accident occurred in 1977 when two Boeing 747 Jumbo jets collided on the runway at Tenerife airport amid confusion over clearances for take-off, killing 583 people. The disaster led to major changes to safety protocol, including clearer and standardised communications between control tower and cockpit. With strict standards to keep aircraft apart on the ground and in the sky, the aviation industry can boast an increasingly stellar safety record. But one former British Airways pilot said there remained a greater risk of problems on the ground than in the air. “It is a high workload environment, [where] you need to ramp up your attention to detail,” he said. Planes operate collision avoidance systems while they are airborne, but there is no universal “last line of defence” at airports, according to the FSF report. Modern aircraft are equipped with enhanced ground proximity warning systems that provide flight crews with timely and accurate information about potential conflicts with obstacles or terrain as they near the ground. But ground-based technology is “often cost-prohibitive and not scalable to deploy at thousands of airports”, it added.<br/>
