Vueling A320 and Blue Panorama B763 near Barcelona on Jul 24th 2016, near collision
Last Update: July 29, 2017 / 14:27:02 GMT/Zulu time
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 24, 2016
Classification
Incident
Cause
Near collision
Airline
Vueling
Flight number
VY-874
Departure
Barcelona, Spain
Destination
Manchester, United Kingdom
Aircraft Registration
EC-MGE
Aircraft Type
Airbus A320
ICAO Type Designator
A320
A Blue Panorama Boeing 767-300, registration EI-CMD performing flight BV-1740 from Rome Fiumicino (Italy) to Cayo Largo Del Sur (Cuba), was enroute at FL310 about 75nm west of Barcelona.
Transponder Data suggest, that the aircraft came as close as 100 feet vertical and 1.53nm horizontally at 15:47:23Z.
Spain's CIAIAC reported an "Airprox Incident" enroute near waypoint LUGAR (N41.748011 E0.318442) near Barcelona. The occurrence was rated a serious incident and is being investigated.
On Aug 10th 2016 Spain's CIAIAC reported that the minimum separation reduced to 200 feet vertical and 1.5nm horizontal. The Vueling A320 had been cleared to climb to FL330 and proceed direct to waypoint MARIO, which resulted in the loss of separation. TCAS Resolution Advisories were issued in both flightdecks.
On Jul 27th 2017 Spain's CIAIAC released their final report in Spanish (only) concluding the probable causes of the incident were:
The non-detection of flight BV-1740 on the screen and following clearance to flight VY-874 to climb to FL330, which led the controller to simply silence conflict alarms generated by the radar systems believing the conflict arose on another pair of aircraft and coming to the conclusion that there was no risk after assessing the separation of that pair of aircraft.
A contributing factor was, that the occurrence happened near the time of relief, when the controller focussed on other traffic on the screen in order to brief the incoming controller on the existing traffic pattern.
The CIAIAC analysed that the controller was handling 13 aircraft at the time of the occurrence and thus had to turn attention to those aircraft as well. It was necessary to consider that the occurrence happened at 15:46Z with the handover to the incoming controller taking place at 15:46:37Z. The outgoing controller was thus focussing on the other traffic in order to brief the incoming controller.
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 24, 2016
Classification
Incident
Cause
Near collision
Airline
Vueling
Flight number
VY-874
Departure
Barcelona, Spain
Destination
Manchester, United Kingdom
Aircraft Registration
EC-MGE
Aircraft Type
Airbus A320
ICAO Type Designator
A320
This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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