Dramatic move avoided mid-air collision
A PASSENGER on a Ryanair flight suffered a broken ankle when the pilot made a dramatic manoeuvre to avoid another aircraft.
The Irish-registered 737 was flying at 37,000ft above the Canaries when it requested to descend to 13,000ft.
As it dropped air traffic control on the Spanish island told the crew to stop at 36,000ft as there was an Easyjet plane close by.
A passenger suffered the injury in the incident on February 10 last year when the pilot switched off the autopilot to make the manoeuvre. A Spanish air accident investigation, published last week, found: “According to the radar data, at 16.38.04, as the aircraft was descending from FL370, it was instructed by the control service to stop the descent at FL360 due to a potential conflict with another aircraft.
“Seconds later, according to flight recorder data, the aircraft’s pilot selected the Alt Hold mode on the mode control panel in order to maintain the altitude.
“At that time the aircraft was passing through FL364 at a high rate of descent. One second later, as the aircraft was crossing through Incident FL363, the pilot happened last year decided to disengage the autopilot.
“The pilot, as per his statement, thought they had gone past their cleared flight level of FL360 and seeing that the recovery manoeuvre was taking too long, he decided to manually return to the flight level instructed by air traffic control.” It was at this point the aircraft lurched suddenly causing the passenger, who was standing, to fall heavily.”
A flight attendant who witnessed the injury added: “The passenger had a child, approximately five years old, in his arms and he was exiting the right hand lavatory.
“The injured passenger turned his body to the left to try to shield the child, which forced his legs into an unnatural position. No one else was injured.”