By Rudy Pont, BeCA Air Safety Committee Chairman

“Gent escapes tragedy on January 1: two aircraft nearly collide.” The headline of a news article on 14/01/17 didn’t leave much to the imagination; or did it?

According to the preliminary BEA report (based on information received from the Belgian AAIU), an Egyptair A300 and an Air France A320 lost separation, when the Egyptian plane climbed through its cleared level (FL210), despite a correct read back and provided traffic information. This triggered a TCAS RA which prompted the Air France (level at FL220) to climb, while the system instructed the Egypt flight crew to level off. They didn’t. Leading to a minimum distance of ca. 0.74NM/300ft (i.s.o. the required 5NM/1000ft).

Source: Flightradar24

Although the factual information in the newspaper was correct (no false truths yet), the choice of words clearly added to the dramatic effect. Not to mention the fact that the flight crew allegedly “disobeyed an ATC instruction 3 times” and the fact that the Governor of Oost-Vlaanderen and mayor of Ghent demanded to be informed immediately when similar events would happen in the future. Interesting…

Yes, of course this is a serious incident and it needs to be investigated to prevent recurrence. But do we really need to add the drama? Do we need forced comments of governors and mayors asked to react right after the news is released, without context nor technical understanding?

TCAS is mandated in Europe since 2000 and every (summer) month over 40 Resolution Advisories are triggered over Europe (46 RAs per million flights in 2015). Nevertheless a 2010 EASA study predicted only a single collision every 7.5 years (or 10 times the tolerable rate). Loss of separation happens, despite technology updates, monitoring, training and promotion, but the statistics are good. Very good. The paradox is that the safer we get, the more allergic we become to incidents – especially if we can point at the omnipresent ‘human error’. Or is this appetite for drama just another symptom of our twitter-society in which news should be instant, brief and shallow…

Dear journalists, please remain true to your profession and tell people the full truth, not just the easy bite spectacular bits, because this will lead to the old-fashioned blame and shame; and we all know we will never learn anything from that and it does not serve aviation safety.

Epilogue: as I am writing this article another headline pops up: “The pilot said: there is a crack in the plane. And then silence followed”. A cracked windshield followed by an uneventful precautionary landing. I probably need to write another article…