Inquiry finds passenger jets' near miss not dangerous

An investigation into an incident in which two passenger jets came unacceptably close over Auckland International Airport has been closed without a formal report.

Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) chief investigator John Mockett said yesterday that at no time during the incident in April last year was there a risk of collision.

The loss of separation incident involved a Qantas Boeing 747-300, callsign QF43, and an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400, callsign NZ124.

At the time TAIC said QF43 was on an instrument approach to runway 23 right at Auckland Airport when air traffic control (ATC) noted an unidentified aircraft tracking towards its approach path.

Controllers told QF43 to abort the approach and instructed the crew to turn right towards the central city and to climb to 3000 feet.

At that time, Air New Zealand flight NZ124 was following on an instrument approach to the same runway, and had been cleared to descend to an altitude of 4000 feet.

As QF43 climbed away, its crew received a ground proximity warning and initiated a pull-up to 5000 feet. This occurred about one to one-and-a-half nautical miles behind NZ124, which was then descending through 4500 feet. As a result, the required separation between aircraft was infringed. Both landed without further incident.

Mr Mockett said both crews were aware of each other, and the crew of QF43 consciously climbed on a heading that took it behind NZ124.

"The crew of QF43 acted in accordance with their company procedures, which are similar to those of Air New Zealand, and ATC quickly regained control of the situation. In other words, the defences worked."

The alert was caused by a fault with the first officer's radar altimeter on QF43, which provided false information to the aircraft's enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS).

Mr Mockett said the manufacturer of the EGPWS had confirmed that software updates being incorporated by Qantas and available to all operators, either as part of new equipment purchases or retrofitted to older EGPWS's, would prevent a recurrence of this type of event.

- NZPA