Thread: Midair collision in Victoria

Originally Posted by JDNSW

It seems from news reports that there has been a midair collision between two light twins at Mangalore airport. There were two on board each plane, and no survivors. Both are reported as training flights, one local, one from Tyabb.

Weather conditions are reported as heavy cloud.

Oh dear. The plane from Tyabb would likely have come up through the Kilmore Gap. I'm not ascribing anything to anything, but the weather here recently makes that passage fraught. Read that again, I am not apportioning blame. Might be that conditions north of the Divide were clear, but Mangalore is close to Seymour, and many aircraft fall foul.

Midairs in the circuit?? Tragic.

We can thank the electronic dick for unalerted see and avoid separation.
There’s nothing more stressful than taking a 180 seat jet into a CTAF, and having to arrange your own separation with VFR traffic.

Originally Posted by Hugh Jars

We can thank the electronic dick for unalerted see and avoid separation.

Guessing you know something we don't.

Originally Posted by Hugh Jars

There’s nothing more stressful than taking a 180 seat jet into a CTAF, and having to arrange your own separation with VFR traffic.

180 seat jets don't usually use Mangalore... I'm struggling for reference here, Huge.

I think Hugh is talking about the influence of Dick Smith on changes to reporting rules at uncontrolled airfields.

Whether that had any relevance to this accident I don't know. My suspicion is that one or both of the aircraft were not actually in VFR.

Originally Posted by johntins

Guessing you know something we don't.



180 seat jets don't usually use Mangalore... I'm struggling for reference here, Huge.

John, back in the 80's all aircraft on certain flight plans were given alerted traffic information by Flight Service (ie, full flight following). It was a valuable tool to enhance one's awareness of conflicting traffic. It was removed with reforms in the early 90's (from memory), and now (generally) only IFR aircraft are given traffic on each other. For the rest, it's unalerted see-and-avoid. There was a paper written in the 80's about the limitations of such separation practices, but the reforms were forced through anyway.

My reference to the Mangalore location is relevant. I fly into places like Ayers Rock, Ballina, Mildura, Hervey Bay, Kalgoorlie, Newman, etc in the jet. We get a limited traffic service at Ayers Rock and Ballina, but essentially all these places have similar operating procedures (CTAF) to Mangalore. That is "lookout, and don't hit anyone". In other words, arrange your own separation, aka unalerted see-and-avoid.

So, if both these aircraft were operating VFR, it's possible they did not know about each other, didn't see each other, and clearly unalerted see-and-avoid procedures did not work yesterday in the Mangalore area.

Unalerted see-and-avoid usually works in these places when people talk to each-other on the radio. A lot of the time there is traffic in these CTAFs, and we don't know about it because the other pilots are not broadcasting (or listening), or the frequency is jammed by aircraft operating at nearby airports. THAT can be a problem.

The slowest speed a passenger jet (like a B737) can fly in the landing pattern can be up to 3 times the speed of a light aircraft doing the same thing. So if I'm following a lighty that I can't see and don't know about, that is a real problem and a collision risk. If I know about the other traffic, I can modify my flight path to make it work (and be safe).

The above is an illustration of some of the complexities of operating into airports with CTAFs like Mangalore, Mildura etc.

Update:

It appears both aircraft were on IFR flight plans. That opens a whole 'nother can of worms. They should have been made aware of each other by ATC, and separated themselves.

Thanks for detailing it, and I was generally aware of it. I remember one occasion in the 1980s (I'd have to search my log book for the date) when I was flying from Dubbo to Lilydale, and diverted to Mangalore because of weather on and south of the ranges (fog). It turned out that all airports in Melbourne area were below IFR minimums as well, and by the time the fog started to lift about lunchtime, there was quite a collection there. No jets that I can remember, but there were a couple of F-27 RPTs (if I remember rightly, one was Canberra-Albury-Melbourne, the other Hobart-Melbourne) plus a large cargo plane, DC-6 I think, but might have been a DC-4. Plus a collection of light aircraft.

Quite an interesting discussion among the aircrew assembled in the old terminal building. A crisis was developing for the cargo plane - the crew was about to run out of hours for the day, but was averted when the news came through that Essendon was opening.

Just watched a You Tube for CTAF. Supposed to be genuine but how would you know? What a bloody nightmare with all & sundry calling in with utter bull****! Well, it was in the USA. One assumes Oz is not a lot better.

Onyer dick, you will be remembered for this cockup & I was sure you wanted to improve aviation standards here..