ATC portrayal on Sky One

[rest have risen above me]

The other night I watched a bit of Sky's sensationalism and to be honest it did not make ATC look good. The programme called "Mid Air Collision" basically recreated a fictional Mid Air Collision between a couple of airliners. (I know you can't recreate fiction but that was the way it was done.)
The be all and end all was to scare us into thinking that you couldn't move above the SE of England due to loads of jets and that ATC couldn't cope. So if you took a fag break thousands would die.
Now I've had a pint or two with you aviation traffic wardens and have never got an inkling of such congestion is it really that bad or should sky get a reality injection?

 

[A CLING NERD SHRON]

Mistakes led to near-miss over Essex

Air Traffic Controllers were blamed for not keeping pace with the pilots' actions



The BBC's Simon Montague: Mistakes were made
An official accident report has blamed a combination of mistakes by air traffic controllers and pilots for what was nearly a mid-air disaster.

A Boeing 747 on its way to Luton airport and a business jet heading for Chelmsford just avoided colliding with each other over Essex on 3 July 1997.


[ image: A 747 identical to the one in the incident]
A 747 identical to the one in the incident
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch says the two aircraft came within less than a mile of each other in cloud.

Only when on-board alerts were activated did the pilots take evasive action.

The AAIB has suggested that controllers should have some experience of the flight deck operations of the planes they deal with.

CAA defends safety of service

The Civil Aviation Authority has accepted a series of safety recommendations.

But its spokesman Bill Sempel said that although mistakes were made, no-one was put in any danger.

"The jumbo pilot had a number of things to do and he did them in sequence. The air traffic controller didn't pick up quickly enough on the was the airoplane was behaving.

"The overall message that comes out of this investigation is that the national air traffic service in the United Kingdom is an extremely safe service.

"Here we have an incident where things went slightly wrong but the safetynets that are built into our system worked very effectively."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/173190.stm

Well?DT_Xtremez_32:

 

[rest have risen above me]

PPrune was a bit in depth I'm just talking Pub Banter. I just caught a rubbish doc and thought I'd ask the experts. PPrune got a bit slag Sky Off rather than "Am I going to die on my next flight to Costa El Ov Alotta. DT_Xtremez_42:

 

[Chaka]

"Am I going to die on my next flight to Costa El Ov Alotta"

A mid-air over UK airspace will happen one day, just a matter of when.

The good news is you have more chance of dying on the way to the airport, so you won't be on the flight anyway.