Plane with almost 180 passengers is 1 meter from collision in Paris

A plane of the Swedish company Norwegian Air Sweden with almost 180 people on board came within a meter of colliding with the ground during a landing maneuver at the airport in Paris, France, according to a report released last Monday (11) by the local civil aviation investigation agency. The incident was considered serious by the authorities.

The aircraft, an Airbus A320 with 178 people on board – 172 passengers and six crew members – had taken off from Stockholm, Sweden, on the morning of May 23 and was on loan from a Maltese airline. When starting the movement to land at Charles de Gaulle airport, the busiest in the French capital, the pilots did not realize that they were on a collision course with the ground.

According to the French Civil Aviation Security Investigation and Analysis Agency (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la securité de l’aviation civile – BEA), the airport’s control tower had given incorrect atmospheric pressure instructions to the plane. As a result, the Airbus – which had no visual contact with the runway due to bad weather – performed the descent procedure 85 meters below the indicated level, without the equipment indicating the incorrect levels.

The same erroneous instruction had been sent to another flight minutes earlier. The pilots, however, corrected the settings without questioning the control tower and landed safely. In both cases, the control tower communicated with the flights in English. In the conversation with an Air France flight moments later, the instructions were passed correctly.

In the case of the A320 pilots, the decision was to reverse the landing. By the time the autopilot was deactivated and the plane began to climb, it was just 1.8 meters off the ground, over a field just over a kilometer from the runway threshold. On a second attempt, the crew managed to visually correct the flaws and land 15 minutes later.

The BEA’s investigation is expected to continue into the non-activation of the Impact Alert and Alert System (TAWS) alarm, Charles de Gaulle Airport’s minimum safe altitude warning system settings and other cases. similar that may have happened recently.

Sought by the report, Norwegian Air Sweden stated that it is “committed to safe operation” and that all companies with which it has lease agreements with crew – when a company temporarily provides an aircraft and at least one crew member – follow all safety regulations. Europe’s security.