UTAir 767-300 Near Miss - Why We Fly Is Beyond Me (The Case For High Speed Rail)

I used to fly a dozen times a month, and I suppose the events of 9/11 have a lot to do with eventual change of employment. I seriously felt like I was risking my life for clients who could have cared less. Long hours, doing race track waiting for the weather to break, in flight thunderstorms and more near terminal landings than I care to think about.
 

 

I don't hate to fly, in fact I picked up my private pilot ticket in my early 20's, IFR rating shortly there after. The glut of post Vietnam pilots made aviation a poor career choice, at the time and so I settled into my first class seat 1A for the better part of 20 years.

 

I love to fly as long as I'm in the front seat, being in the back of the bus is a rather uneasy feeling. The truth is knowing how to fly is more a burden than not knowing. The trouble is, pilots know what sounds normal and what doesn't during a flight.

And the sound of a go-around over the threshold is pretty damn un-nerving on a clear day.
 

From the AP: A passenger plane preparing to leave Barcelona’s El Prat airport on Saturday taxied across a runway just as another plane was about to land, forcing the arriving plane to abort its landing and climb sharply to avoid a possible disaster.

 

 

Miguel Angel Ramirez captured the dramatic moment Aerolineas Argentinas Airbus 340 crossed the runway as an aircraft from Russian airline UTair was descending in a video taken on Saturday.

(CP's take: Ramirez is an aviation buff, who uses a zoom lens to capture planes landing and departing from outside the fence. The zoom lens gives the impression that the planes are only feet from each other.  Now AENA will assure everyone that at no time where the aircraft in danger of colliding, and that the pilot of the 767 did as he was supposed to, and executed a go-around. But what if this had been during a CAT III operation zero visibility heavy rain and fog?)  

Spanish airport authority Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA) said Monday the UTair plane, which officials described only as a Boeing, circled back and landed safely. None of the passengers on either plane was hurt.

AENA said it has opened an investigation into what happened. It had no details on how close the planes were at the time of the incident.

The interesting thing about Ramirez's video is that is shows just how vulnerable aircraft are to human error. Watch the UTAir plane land after the go-around, sloppy landing why, because the pilot had a load of shit in his boxers.

High Speed Rail - Because uncontrolled decent never turns out good.