from Hacker News

Very 'close' Qantas jets came within 800m of each other

by thisisastopsign on 1/19/20, 12:40 AM with 45 comments

  • by anderspitman on 1/19/20, 2:39 AM

    My first coding job was at an avionics subcontractor. One of the senior engineers there told me once that TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System, equipped on all large planes) is theoretically capable of resolving up to 127 aircraft all converging on the same point. As long as all the pilots follow the directions, there won't be any collisions. I have no idea if that's actually true, and could definitely be remembering it wrong, but it always seemed impressive.

  • by s_Hogg on 1/19/20, 1:41 AM

    Having been in and out of Sydney a lot, I find this very easy to believe. The airport is straining at the limit for capacity, so they have been quite adventurous in getting planes in and out of there for some time. Particularly with the curfew limiting the hours of operation.*

    * Not saying the curfew is a bad thing

  • by DominikPeters on 1/19/20, 1:44 AM

  • by tus88 on 1/19/20, 2:07 AM

    > The Airbus A330 involved in the August 5, 2019, incident was taking off on runway 34 Right as a Boeing 737-800 landing on the same runway was instructed by air traffic control to perform a go-around.

    This makes no sense. The seem to be blaming the go around. But what really seems to have happened is they allowed and aircraft on a runway a plane was about to land on. Who authorized this and why? What if the plane didn't go around? Would it just have wiped out the plane on the runway?

    And it sounds as if the 330 was both taking off ans flying at the same time.

    > The A330 first officer, who was pilot flying, then saw the 737 in close proximity and, in response, reduced the aircraft’s angle of bank to reduce the turn towards the 737.

    I don't get it.