Barcelona: A plane near-miss at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport is now the subject of an official investigation by Spanish aviation watchdogs.
Two passenger jets came within seconds of disaster when a Boeing 767, travelling at 150mph (241km/h), was forced to abort its landing to avoid crashing into an Airbus A340 taxiing on the runway.
The two aircraft were just a few hundred yards apart.
It happened just before 7am on Sunday when the 767 operated by Russian airline UTair was coming in to land — just as a transatlantic Aerolineas Argentinas plane taxied across its path to prepare for take-off. Between them, the jets are thought to have been carrying hundreds of passengers.
Only last-minute action by the UTair crew appeared to prevent what experts said would have been a “certain major disaster”.
Some pilots estimated that the Russian plane was just 100ft above the ground when the pilot pulled away. He then performed a “go around” — pulling up fast and accelerating hard to abort the landing — before bringing the aircraft down safely shortly afterwards. The drama was caught on camera by aviation enthusiast Miguel Angel. He then posted the video online, where it has already been viewed more than a million times.
Angel, who can be heard whispering “Oh my God” in Spanish as he shoots the footage, described it as “one of the worst experiences I have ever had”. Witnesses say such near-misses are a regular occurrence at the airport. One told a Spanish newspaper: “I know the guy who took the video and he’s told me it’s the fourth time he’s seen something like this.” Independent Spanish civil aviation accident investigators announced they would be looking into it. Airport chiefs also promised to take action, despite earlier trying to play down the incident.
A spokesman for Spanish Airports and Air Navigation said there was never any danger of a collision as there was enough space between the two planes.
He said that the “go-around” performed by the Russian pilot was standard procedure and neither of the airlines involved had made a formal complaint.
The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority said that if the incident had happened in Britain, it would have been classified as a “runway incursion” and looked into by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
The near-miss comes just days after another scare near the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. A Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 flew too close to a Delta Air Lines A320 just before 7pm on Thursday. However, air traffic controllers caught the error and corrected the planes’ courses before they could get any closer.
The deadliest air crash to date happened in 1977, when 583 people died after a KLM plane collided on the runway with a Pan Am jet amid thick fog at Tenerife airport.
