Simviation Forums

A SAS Aircraft was inroute from Copenhagen to Washington with 255 passengers, was yesterday 40 seconds from a collision with a KLM Aircraft over Norway.

It was the two aircrafts own TCAS systems, that avioded the disaster.

8 kilometres from eachother

The two aircrafts was at 36.000ft over Kristianssand.
When the aircrafts TCAS turned on, there was less than 8 kilometres (5 miles) between the aircrafts.
Large passengeraircrafts are flying with about 15 kilometres (9 miles) pr minute.

The case is called a serius incident by the norwegian FAA.
Its now being investigated, if it was a tecnical or a human error that caused the incident.

The norwegian paper Dagbladet writes, that that kind of incident is really rare, and its years ago, last time two aircrafts has been that close to a collision in norwegian airspace.

Translated from danish by Theis Th

It doesnt state if they were at the same altitude and going head to head with each other.

Thankfully events like this are becoming rarer, but occasionally happen. I expect an ATCO will not be enjoying himself at the moment...

It doesnt state if they were at the same altitude and going head to head with each other.

They was.

More exciting than the in-flight movie methinks

Well..some 30-40seconds later they'd be smashing into eachother. I heard it on the radio earlier this morning.

ATC hick-up it seems.

"TRAFFIC....TRAFFIC....DESCEND...DESCEND...ADJUST VERTICAL SPEED....CLEAR OF CONFLICT"
That's what saved them  :-[

On A.net it is stated that they were at FL34 and at 90degrees to each other

For jets thats pretty close... except twice I've been just seconds from a midair in a 172-sure wakes you up.

I'm confused here..

Technically, if they were 'head-on' or almost, wouldn't they only have been 15 seconds from colliding?

If there's 8 kilometers between them and they're both flying 15 kilometes pr minute, they'd reach each other after having travelled 4 miles (15 seconds), wouldn't they?

SAS is one of my favourite airlines  :)
Its very hard to hit another moving object in the sky, the ATC must have been pretty poor and there must have been a lot of bad luck involved.