Two heavy aircraft departing Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) had a very close call, which is now being investigated by regulators. I guess at least a close call wasn’t in the United States, for once?
Continue reading: Hong Kong Airport Parallel Takeoff Leads To Very Close Call
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
At the end of the video it already states "As the climbing rates of the two cargo flights varied from what the ATC officers had anticipated, the desired vertical separation was not achieved"
There is nothing dangerous about the parallel takeoff, shame on such speculation. At first blush the aircraft departing 7C did not follow the SID, which calls for a left turn shortly after takeoff. Fairly straightforward.
Further to my comment above, based on flight paths it would appear the 7C takeoff followed the 7R SID for whatever reason. Naturally two planes on the same SID taking off at same time with minimal horizontal separation due to parallel runways is not supposed to happen. Why this happened, will inevitably be learned via investigation.
I have a question on how TCAS works, or how responding to it works: 1) Do the two TCAS systems communicate to each other or is each one isolated and just tells you that you are in danger?
Where I am going with this is does TCAS say to each jet "Jet A and Jet B you are too close, Jet A climb, Jet B descend" or does TCAS just warn each jet that they are too close and then the pilots have to figure out what to do? If it doesn't communicate with each other, then how do you prevent both jets from responding the same, in this case maybe both descending, and thus not solving the problem?
They communicate with each other in order for each aircraft to get "opposite" resolution - climb / descent. I believe there is also some "light mode" which can be utilised if one of the aircraft doesn't have TCAS, which uses the other A/Cs direction to make the "decision".