Sydney rejects blame for jets’ ‘near miss’

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 8

Sydney rejects blame for jets’ ‘near miss’

NZPA-AAP Sydney Australian aviation officials yesterday denied that a Sydney air traffic controller was responsible for two airliners nearly colliding over the Tasman Sea last Sunday. A New Zealand civil aviation inquiry found yesterday that blame for the incident lay with Sydney air traffic control. The inquiry found that the failure of an Australian radio-operator to inform the pilot of a Continental DCIO of its flight level was the cause of the “near miss.”

A Qantas 747 and a Continental DCIO, missed each other by only 1000 feet while flying in New

Zealand airspace midway between Auckland and Sydney. The Australian Federal Department of Aviation said yesterday that a Sydney air traffic controller had been suspended after the incident but was reinstated after a preliminary inquiry established he had used the correct procedures. However, further investigations were being done into the incident by the Canberra-based Bureau of Air Safety, a department spokesman said. The Continental, flying from Sydney to Auckland, and Qantas 747, flying from Auckland to Sydney, were both at 35,000 feet

but were 1000 feet apart at the time of the incident. A request from Australian to Auckland controllers that the Continental fly at 37,000 feet was endorsed in Auckland, said controller of airline standards for civil aviation, Captain Barry Cranston. But the message was not passed on to the pilot so that both aircraft were flying at 35,000 feet, he said. The fact that they had missed each other by 1000 feet was due to slight “imperfections” in navigational systems — “otherwise they would have been in the same spot,” said Mr Cranston.