El Prat airport. Love it. Must be named after the air traffic controller on duty when this happened. A "near miss" used to be classed as any planes comeing within a half mile of each other. This is way less than that.
This would have been the Control Tower in charge at this proximity - clearly no co-ordination between ground and air controllers going on. Looks like the 340 is turning on to depart - he should not have been given clearance to line-up with an aircraft so close on approach. This could have been catastrophic.
The world's worst Air disaster took place at a Spanish airport (Tennerife) in 1977 I believe! Two planes KLM and PAN AM collided, one on Take Off, and one on landing, killing most onboard both planes! Truly horrendous and this incident on Sunday came very close to repeating that awful tragedy.
Pushing Tin was a decent film about air traffic controllers and it does make you wonder if some of the satire with Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack was a bit nearer the mark than they thought when they wrote it. This was so bloody close as has been said and as 'the safest form of transport' allegedly it was a neo-disaster.
I confess that I never pay any attention to the 'safety demonstration' before take off! As far as Im concerned if you are unlucky enough to crash you will be dead end of! No poxy little lifejacket with a whistle and a torch will ever save me!
Bang on, horrific accident that. Few years ago me & the then girlfriend were on a flight to lanzarote. Shortly before landing the pilot says due to a technical fault they had reduced braking so landing might be a little bumpy. Thinking nothing more about it the plane landed, took longer to stop but not dangerously so. Pilot came on said a hydraulic circuit had failed so they'd had to rely on gravity to lower & lock the landing gear, had no reverses and manual brakes As we landed got more worried when we saw a few dozen flashing blue lights lining the runway. Having watched a few aircrash investigation shows (well worth watching) I now realise how serious it was and had a bit of retrospective bum twitch. Oh and as for survival, actually as long as it's not a blown up or falling out the sky modern aircraft crashes are incredibly survivable. Look at the BA crash at Heathrow in 2008 when ice crystals formed in the fuel lines and brought the plane down short of the runway. 100% survived. Interesting to realise that the pilot saved not only the passenger's but also people around Heathrow, by retracting the flaps at the last minute it gave the plane enough lift to clear the airport perimeter fence.
It wasn't as close as that, but about a year, year and a half ago I had a similar incident at Perth airport when I was coming back from working in the mines. A tad scary to say the least!
