Easyjet A320 tells United Boeing 787 to GO AROUND! | Serious Aircraft Incident

boeing 787 from united airlines is on final approach runway 09 left in paris sheldigol airport when they contact tower they received an unexpected clearance for a sidestep approach to the parallel runway they question this but they don't really get any further clarification from the tower on the ground an airbus 320 from easyjet is just about to line up for takeoff on runway 09 right when they realize that something is about to go really wrong what is about to happen is a really really good example of how easy it is for human error to occur but it's also a great example of how resilient and how many safety barriers there is in aviation stay tuned this video is brought to you together with brilliant use the link in the description below for your special deal the incident that we're going to cover today happened on the 20th of july 2020. so this was at the top of the pandemic in europe which meant that it was much less aviation traffic going on than normal it happened in paris charles de gaulle which is the main airport in paris and parish el de gaulle has two sets of double runways they use they either use the sudden or the noden setup for arriving and departing prior to this incident happening for the last two weeks they have been using the southern setup and that has its own tower so this morning when this happened at 0 5 17 local time the controller that was on duty had just moved into the northern tower that was supposed to be used for the northern configuration with runway 09 left and 09 right the problem was though that because of the pandemic this tower had not been used and the normal position where she would be sitting at was inoperative right there was something wrong with it so the controller found herself sitting on a controller station which was slightly offset from where she would normally sit where she would have perfect view over the final firmware 09 right and left in this case she was sitting a little bit more towards the east so the the tower itself was blocking her view slightly the weather on the day was really good the wind was coming from the east with some light occasionally gusty winds it was a very good visibility on the ground only some high clouds but since this happened very early on in the morning at times of 5 17 it meant that the sun was just risen over the horizon and it was a little bit of moisture in the air and when you have that kind of situation you can get a little bit of sun glare as you're coming in for landing and that was reported by the arriving aircraft as well on the airport in itself there was a lot of things going on the controller had started about an hour earlier and just about 15 minutes prior to this incident happening a boeing 787 from air france had come in for an approach from zero nine left however due to a technical problem they had executed the go around and after the go-around they requested to come in and do a non-standard landing on runway zero nine right that was primarily used for departures on this day the reason they want to do that is because romwe zero nine ride is a longer runway on the ground there was two aircraft that had recently landed on runway zero nine left and they were holding short before they were supposed to cross run with zero nine right and awaiting the landing of the boeing 787 from air france that had the technical issues there was also two aircraft at holding point delta five awaiting departure and the first one in line for departure was a airbus a320 from easyjet when this incident start the boeing 787 from united airlines would cosign united 57 had just transferred over from paris air traffic control to the shell the goal tower controller now the paris air traffic control had previously cleared them to initiate the ils approach for runway 09 left which is what the crew had briefed for as soon as they switched over to the tower controller the tower controller came with the following message united 5-7 bonjour continued approach runway 09 right you cleared to land runway zero nine right surface winds zero one zero degrees nine nodes costing twenty one the pilots of united five seven found that a little bit strange because they had previously been cleared for uh the ils approach from with zero nine left and that's what they were expecting to land at so the first officer who was pilot monitoring at the time called the tower controller back up and said understand clear to land runway 09 right side step runway 09 right united 57 and to this he never received any further response back from the tower controller so at this point it's really important to kind of take a step back and look at what's happening here so if we start with the tower controller she has been dealing with the air france 787 that has had their technical problem and has now been cleared in to land for runway 09 right she also is awaiting to give clearance to the two aircraft that is waiting to cross roamer zero nine right and she has two aircraft awaiting departure from the c9 right this means that in her head everything is going on on round with zero nine right the second thing that's worth mentioning is that the pilot for united five seven was very correctly questioning the fact that they were being cleared to land on a different runway than they were doing the approach to but they were coming from america and the phraseology that he used was understand clear to land runway 9 right sidestep runway 09 right and the the use of the word understand is not used in europe to a great extent instead we tend to use the wording confirm so it is likely that if he would have said confirm clear to land runway 09 right it would have raised some alarm clocks in the tower controller the the wording confirmed means that you have to really think through the clearance that you've just given but the wording understand might just sounded like a confirmation for the controller the other thing that also probably played the part here is that united is an american company flown by american pilots and in the united states the sidestep maneuver which is where you're doing an approach to one runway but then you switch over and you land on a parallel runway it's quite often used there's something that happens fairly regularly so the american pilots would not necessarily have thought that there was anything strange with this clearance on the other hand here in europe this happens very very rarely and if this would have happened to me in my cockpit i wouldn't have even been able to accept it because you are required to do a completely different brief for this there are different minimas that apply and in this case run with zero nine right threshold is actually closer to the aircraft than runway nine left which would have required a steeper descent rate in order to stabilize the aircraft on final in fact it would need more than a thousand feet per minute to send rate which is something that in my sops we have to pre-brief anyway the united airlines 787 on final they discussed this they didn't get any further clarification and as this was happening the boeing 787 in front of them from air france was actually landing around with zero nine right so the captain on the united aircraft who was pilot flying he quickly looked at it he said yep i'll be able to do this within their recipes they were okay to do a descent with more than a thousand feet per minute so he saw that he could just disconnect the autopilot and do a visual maneuver over drama c9 right which is what they decided to do now as the united crew is starting this maneuver the boeing 787 from air france have just landed runway 09 right and the tower controller unaware of the mistake that she has just made clears the airbus a320 from easyjet to line up and wait wrong with zero nine right now the pilot monitoring on the easyjet aircraft is the captain in this case sitting on the left in the flight deck is doing something that we always do before we enter or cross a runway which is to check the extended centerline runway in both directions prior to entering the runway and he looks out and he sees the boeing 787 from united airlines on final to what he believes is runway 09 left because you have to understand that when you're sitting in an aircraft and you're watching an aircraft or final to a parallel runway it is very very hard to to notice if there's any difference you know basically if that aircraft is coming in the final on your runway or on the parallel runway and he sees it he doesn't think that there's anything strange with that and they continue to enter the runway united airlines 57 is now in the middle of the side step procedure which means that they're increasing their descent rate and they're turning slightly to the right what happens now is that the captain in the easyjet airbus that is about to enter the runway makes a second look down the centerline and when he does this he realizes that the boeing 708.7 on final is now actually turning towards the right turning towards his runway the united airlines 787 at this point is only about 0.7 of a mile away from the runway at an altitude of about 300 feet the easyjet aircraft at this point has actually ended the drum with c9 right but they haven't lined up fully with the centerline instead they're at a perpendicular angle to the center line and the eastjet captain understands what's about to happen so he clicks on his radio and he says tower there's traffic on rom with zero nine right then quickly followed by run with zero nine right go around so that's a direct order to the aircraft on final to go around at this point the crew in the 787 has also spotted the airbus which is on their runway that they're about to land on so they execute the go-around and they respond going around wrong with zero nine right which meant that they would have done the go around even if this call wouldn't have come from the airbus captain when this happened the rim cast system inside of the tower rim cast stands for runway incursion monitoring and collision avoidance system also sounds inside of the tower and the tower controller understands what has happened she comes back onto the frequency and issues climb clearance to 4000 feet for the boeing 787 and simultaneously another controller in the tower who had been in a supportive position had also been looking out to the tower seeing the 787 turning towards runway 09 right and was about to rise the alarm if rimcast hadn't done it already united 57 came as close to 80 feet over the threshold before they started climbing away again and when they passed the easy at airbus 320 on the runway they were at an altitude of 300 feet after the missed approach they did a completely normal approach in and landed without a further incident on runway zero nine left so what's the point of this video then why do i choose to share something with you where everything actually worked out okay well there are some really good lessons to learn from this which i will share with you after this short message for my sponsor i am so happy to have brilliant as a sponsor of this episode now brilliant is an absolutely fantastic online learning platform with hundreds of courses of things for example about fundamentals of mathematics physics but also these brain puzzles where you you have to kind of apply your knowledge and when you come across something that you don't really understand they will have a really good explanation for how to understand it so that you can build on that and solve more and more complex problems i have been working on brilliant together with my son lucas who's 11 years old and he really loves these brain puzzles and he gets so happy every time that you manage to solve something if this sounds interesting to you i would love for you to go down into the video description of this video and click on the brilliant link it will give you a whopping 20 of the annual fee of brilliant but it's completely free to open it up and check it out this was rated as a serious incident by the authorities when they were made aware of what had happened it led to a report which i have based this video on it kind of shows to the extent that the authorities will take into consideration incidents where everyone was fine where nothing actually really happened but where there are really important lessons to learn and of course the main lesson here when they were interviewing both the crews but especially the air traffic controller was the impact that the pandemic has had on safety and the work within the aviation industry the air traffic controller stated that she definitely felt the onset of skill fade which is what happens when you are not working much for a prolonged period of time and that's something that we all in the industry can feel after this last one and a half year where we might not have flown as much as we used to and something that we have to be really aware of and work with you know mistakes will happen they always happen but our vigilance and the way that we deal with these mistakes it is what keeps the industry as safe as it is so in this case for example i want to highlight a few things first of all the fact that the united airlines crew did question the clearance right they got a clearance they didn't think that it was correct they questioned it and then the further error that happened was that the tower controller didn't understand that this was actually a questioning of the clearance right she didn't even respond which she should have done but it was really good of the united crew to question it they should have possibly questioned it even more and from this report the authority says that instead of reading back a clearance that you don't really understand it is better to say confirm clearance right not even reading back what you think you heard just say confirm clearance to force the air traffic controller to re-issue the clearance from the start that should both raise the awareness of the air traffic controller that you know okay maybe i said something wrong uh but it also will give a better picture to the flying crew of what the clearance actually is so confirm clearance read it back in it's full and hopefully that will clear out any ambiguity that might be this also really highlights how important it is as a pilot to check with your own eyes what you're about to do even if you've received a clearance from air traffic control to enter a runway you still have to physically verify that there's no threats to you and your aircraft before you do so the eastjet crew the captain in this case did an excellent job he didn't only check once he checked twice before he entered the runway and he did see something that he didn't like and immediately made an unambiguous call on the control frequency so if you remember the video that i did about the air canada crew that almost landed on some aircraft standing on the taxiway back in san francisco remember that the pilots in those aircraft that were on the taxiway also went out on the frequency but instead of being unambiguous they said something along the line with where is this guy going which only confused air traffic controller now instead if you see that something about to go terribly wrong it's much better to just go out on the frequency and say something like these guys did which is go around run with zero 9 right that cannot be misunderstood by anyone and the last thing i want to point out is just a multitude of different safety barriers that are in place in order to keep a potential accident like this from happening first of all you have the crew in united airlines 5.7 they had the problem of flying into the rising sun which meant that their visibility was a little bit limited but once they got down on low altitude they did see the runway was occupied by the airbus 320 and they were just about to execute to go around and then you have the great job by the pilots in the easyjet airbus 320 that you know went out on the frequency and told the united airlines flight to go around but on top of that you also have the rim cast system that was activated inside of the tower now that dreamcast warning came a little bit late and the reason for that was because the united airlines flight changed from around 09 left to zero nine right and the rim cast system could really only activate when it realized that this aircraft was now suddenly on final to the engaged runway but the alarm did go off and that would have triggered a go around call from air traffic control if they hadn't already done it and then you had another worker sitting in the tower monitoring the air traffic seeing that something was about to go wrong and speaking up so you have several things that would have stopped this from happening and this is kind of the main reason i wanted to make this video i wanted to show you that even though nothing happened in this case it still was serious enough to issue a report like this and you can see how the aviation business is working in order to maximize safety in all possible ways that's all for today guys i hope that you've enjoyed this episode and i hope that you have subscribed to the channel and that you've highlighted the notification bell and i also know that you guys sitting out there thinking where did he get that great t-shirt and i wonder if he has any more designs well in that case you're in luck under this youtube video you have my merch shelf you should be able to find some cool stuff on there but you can also go to mentorpilot.com and go to my store there and find loads of other designs have an absolutely fantastic day wherever you are and i'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 875,131

Keywords: aviation incidents and accidents, aviation incident news, air crash investigation, air crash investigation 2020, air crash documentary, United Airlines, United 57, charles de gaulle airport, Paris, Boeing 737, Boeing 787, Airbus A320, Airbus A320NEO, flight simulator 2020, flight simulator, mentour pilot crash, fear of flying help, nervous flyer tips, nervous flyer help, nervous flyer course, atc conversations, Go Around, Pilot tells, Pilot life, Mentour, mentour pilot

Id: AM01NSZyA7I

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021