Takeoff and landing on the same runway: two planes with 400 people on board about to crash
Not only the fog, even a simple cable stuck in the wrong place was about to cause an unimaginable tragedy
On 18 October 2022, tragedy came close to touching Italian skies.
An episode which, as reported by Corriere della Sera, ended up in the reports of the National Flight Safety Agency which classified it as a "serious inconvenience".
An Iberia Airbus A321 with 203 people on board was about to crash into a Ryanair Boeing 737 with 174 passengers and crew: landing (the first) and take-off (the second) were on the same part of the runway. All at the Venice airport, on a particularly foggy day.
Fortunately, the low-cost pilot activated the emergency procedure and the worst was averted.
According to initial reconstructions, there was a problem in the control tower: it seems that the flight controller, who had just taken over during a shift change, had inserted the headphone cable into the wrong socket. And so, due to an almost trivial error, communications were interrupted. And the Iberia flight was crashing right into the Ryanair flight. The pilots of the second flight saw the plane approaching and via the emergency radio frequency asked the pilots of the first to proceed with the "go-around".
Without getting a response, they were about to clear the runway when from the tower they solved the technical problem and asked the Spanish plane to wait for landing. The jet regained altitude 1,500 meters from the runway, therefore a matter of seconds from the collision.
The National Flight Safety Agency is investigating the case.
(Unioneonline/D)
