Near Disaster At Heathrow

Feb 18, 2001

Two jets came within seconds of disaster in back-to-back near misses at London's Heathrow Airport, it emerged last night, according to The Mirror newspaper.

The packed aircraft were moments from landing on a runway occupied by another plane at Heathrow Airport.

The near catastrophes within a couple of minutes happened when the pilot of a departing Austrian Airlines A320 jet failed to respond to instructions to take off, the newspaper said.

His plane lay in the path of a British Airways 747 from Bombay with 385 passengers on board and a Virgin Atlantic 747 from Washington carrying 245 which were seconds from touchdown.

Only intervention by an air traffic controller who shouted: "Go around! Runway not clear!", averted disaster on the tarmac at 7.00am.

A British Airways pilot told The Mirror: "This shows what pressure controllers are under and the ever increasing fine line between safety and utter disaster."

A spokesman for Austrian Airlines said "minor technical issues" had stopped the plane taking off.

Air Canada was involved in this??

Sorry, thought it may be interesting to any LHR frequent visitor.

Will repost it to BA

How is this different from other cases when planes fly a go-around because the runway is not clear? That has happened to me on two flights trying to land at YYZ, and I gather it is a fairly common occurrence. The passengers on board are not in danger, although they would be if the aircraft did try to land. That's why we have pilots and air traffic controllers.

This is just another example of media hype, which is to be expected from 'The Mirror'.