Two Ryanair Boeing 737-800’s have missed each other by only 400m last month. One of the 737’s was flying from Santiago de Compostela to Palma de Majorca while the other 737 was flying from Seville to Toulouse. Only 400m separated the two aircraft vertically while 3.8km separated the two horizontally.
Alarm bells rang in both cockpits about the prospect of a collision with both pilots responding to the alarms by adjusting their courses to avoid any risk of a collision. It was considered a “near miss” and a “loss of separation” by the Spanish National Air Traffic Services. No one was injured and both aircraft landed safely at their respective destinations.
Ryanair has dismissed the “near miss” claim saying: ‘As the details of this incident confirm, there was no “near collision” as both aircraft took appropriate diversion measures when they were separated by more than 2 miles and 400 feet of vertical airspace’. Ryanair seems to be in a bit of damage control after they were put under fire for doing little action after a racist incident last month , however, they don’t seem like they will take any hits to their reputation after either incident with their rock-bottom fares making the airline an irresistible option for some throughout Europe and surrounds.
One of Ryanair’s many Boeing 737-800 aircraft, at Manchester Airport full photo credit
Recently, I was in a flight from Venice to Toronto and we banked under a jet probably less then 1000 ft above us. I’m betting TCAS sounded then!
This near-miss was possibly related.
I have seen it on various forums and from the comments on aviation herald there are comments insinuating the same thing. Plus look at the amount of times it’s happened before, it’s particularly common over Spain.
In that case that changes the story to a whole another level of safety hazard. 400ft separation is way to little and is in book considered a near miss/on collision course.
Luckily the pilots took the right actions to prevent a mid-air-collision to occur with help and thanks to TCAS I would suppose.
What if? Then you’d see more people in dispair, crying over the loss of their loved ones. A Crash in the air is what would’ve happened. We’ve just had a horrible accident in Asia lately, we don’t need another. Be thankful that nothing happened and rather not question what would happen if they had collided.
