- A crash almost occurred between 2 planes that were brushed on Sunday evening at Nice Airport.
- One was about to take off while the other planned to land … on the same track.
- What are the procedures in force to prevent this type of accident?
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13h
A drama narrowly avoided at Nice airport on Sunday evening. William could never have imagined what he was happening while his plane was about to take off: “We thought it was a thunderstorm or something like that. And one to two minutes later, the pilot came out and told us the trembling voice and on the verge of crying that we had just dodged an airplane crash.”
While the Easyjet company is preparing to take off, another plane from Tunis wants to land and borders on it within fifteen meters. The pilot puts the gases at the last moment, redone a loop before landing twenty minutes later, without incident.
Each landing is requested from the control tower
How could it happen? “All this will be the subject of a very precise, very advanced investigation. The black boxes have already been recovered and the air traffic control bands will also be studied very meticulously”
explains Iza Bazin, aeronautical expert, in the video of the 13h of TF1 (visible at the top of the article).
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Air crash avoided in Nice: “We will have to improve the system,” says Gérard Feldzer, aeronautical expert
The procedure is however very strict to avoid any incident. Each landing is requested from the control tower which authorizes it for a given track. The pilot must then confirm the name of this track. The title of the track (here 04r for right “right” in English) is therefore said and repeated. And to avoid misunderstandings due to accents of different nationalities, everything is based on the international phonetic alphabet. The left track, “Left”, is called Lima, the one on the right, Romeo.
On board, an automatic system makes it possible to detect trajectory deviations provided that the crew has entered the right track because from the control tower, to date, no radar system allows an automatic alert if an airplane deviates from its axis.
