Prince seconds from death
By PAUL THOMPSON
PRINCE Charles’s RAF jet came within seconds of hitting a plane carrying 186 passengers.
The incident was so serious BOTH pilots filed near-miss reports.
This means the planes were just a few hundred yards apart and could have smashed into one another if their courses had not been altered.
An air traffic control insider said last night: “Both planes were lucky not to have collided. It was very hairy, to say the least.”
The Prince was on his way to Spain for a memorial service for the Madrid train bomb victims at the time of the near miss 11,500ft above Newbury, Berks.
He was on HS146 of the Queen’s Flight with one of his private secretaries and a military equerry and had just taken off from RAF Northolt in West London.
The Airbus — believed to be from a European-based airline — was on its final approach to Heathrow Airport.
The Prince’s pilot and the Airbus captain both reported the miss to the Civil Aviation Authority.
A CAA spokesman said: “There is no set distance for a near miss but the pilots would have believed there to have been a danger.”
Brief details about the incident have been logged on the CAA website.
It does not give any clue Charles was on one of the planes and simply refers to a military plane being involved.
The report says: “An Aircraft Proximity (Airprox) report has been filed with the Civil Aviation Authority involving a military aircraft and an A321. The incident took place near Newbury on Wednesday 24 March at 0830 hours at approximately 11,500 feet.”
In the last six months 45 near-miss reports have been logged with the CAA.
It is thought Charles’s scare was caused by an air traffic control mix-up rather than pilot error.
It is standard industry practice for controllers to keep passenger jets 1,000ft apart vertically with a five-mile horizontal gap.
Air safety expert Kieran Daly said: “When you have an aircraft of the Queen’s Flight and a transport jet at cruising height and a near miss report has been filed something significant has happened. Something, somewhere went wrong.”
The Prince WAS informed of the miss. The CAA will report on the incident later in the year.
By: SHAMROCK321 - 17th July 2004 at 21:44
It was a Aer Lingus A321 routing LHR-ORK with 186 passengers aboard.It could have been ORK-LHR.
Just a quick question could it have been from a non European airline.Do any non European airlines fly A321 to Europe?RAM perhaps.
By: Papa Lima - 17th July 2004 at 10:54
I have just written two articles myself (on other subjects) this morning for my French-based magazine, so as a part-time member of the press, I know what you mean! In fact a comparison of the reporting in the Sun and Telegraph is very illustrative of their different styles. It’s just that the Sun was first!
By: Moondance - 17th July 2004 at 10:30
I’m not for a moment suggesting that it didn’t occur, but any incident involving aviation becomes a near death experience to our ‘friends’ in the press, whereas the true nature of the airprox was more likely to be a momentary loss of separation (but that doesn’t sell as many newspapers)
…and thanks for your first pics of the P39 on the other forum, very nice!
By: Papa Lima - 17th July 2004 at 09:45
OK, I prefer the Telegraph myself but the Sun was first:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/16/nbul16.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/16/ixhome.html
By: Moondance - 17th July 2004 at 09:14
If its in the Sun, every word must be true.
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July 17, 2004 at 1:21 am