A few days ago, two Delta aircraft had an incredibly close call over the runways of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), in what can only be described as a massive situational awareness failure on the part of the air traffic controller…
ATC sends Delta plane directly into path of another plane
VASAviation has the air traffic control audio and a visualization of an incident that happened a few days ago at Atlanta Airport. For some background on the two planes involved:
- Delta flight DL2472 was an Airbus A321 departing for Rochester (ROC) that was cleared for takeoff on runway 26L
- Delta flight DL1568 was a Boeing 737 arriving from Pittsburgh (PIT) that was cleared to land on runway 26R around the same time
You might not think much of this, except for the fact that the pilots of DL1568 opted to perform a go around at the last minute, as the Frontier Airlines jet landing before them didn’t clear the runway with enough buffer. Fair enough.
So at this point you had a Delta 737 going around above one runway, and a Delta A321 taking off on a parallel runway. That’s not ideal, but also not a huge issue, since they had an altitude difference, and also were both on the same headings, but parallel.
It’s not like the air traffic controller would turn the two planes on a collision course… right? Well, actually…
Somehow the air traffic controller didn’t seem to be processing how close the planes were to one another, but this is where the situation went from bad to worse. The air traffic controller then gave the plane on the left (taking off from runway 26L) the instruction to make a sharp right turn, even though the plane going around (from runway 26R) was to its right.
That’s right, she sent the plane on the left directly into the course of the plane on the right. This sets off a TCAS alert, which the pilots in turn responded to. It would appear that the planes were basically on top of one another, with a vertical distance of around 500 feet.
For those not familiar with TCAS, this stands for Traffic Collision Avoidance System, and it issues resolution advisories to pilots, giving them instructions about what maneuvers to make, based on traffic becoming dangerously close.
At this point the air traffic controller seemed to go into a bit of a shock, and struggled to manage the situation. It would appear that after about a minute she was replaced by someone else, to give her a chance to catch her breath, or something.
Fortunately the planes quickly got sufficient distance, and went on their respective ways without further incident…
There’s so much that was wrong with this situation
On the most basic level, this was human error. My guess is that the air traffic controller’s instructions for a right turn were actually for the plane performing a go around, and not for the plane that had just taken off. As you can hear, the pilots of DL2472 seemed to be caught off guard by their altitude and heading instructions, which is why they followed up.
That’s a pretty major mistake to make when two planes are already so close to one another. She clearly didn’t have situational awareness here, since she was giving another plane taxi instructions while two planes were getting closer and closer to one another.
Another pilot just jumping in and saying “damn boys” on a frequency didn’t exactly help either. Then there’s the whole United States culture around non-standard phraseology, giving landing instructions even before the runway is clear, etc. We just don’t seem to have the safety margins that we once had…
Bottom line
We saw a dangerous close call over the skies of Atlanta Airport the other day, when one Delta plane was taking off, and another was performing a go around, on parallel runways. The air traffic controller seemed distracted, and didn’t initially notice how close the planes were getting to one another. But she made the situation worse when she instructed the plane on the left to turn right, directly into the path of the plane on the right. As usual, TCAS saved the day…
What do you make of this ATL close call?
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