Just a split second from disaster: Red Arrow misses light aircraft by 100 feet
A RED ARROWS jet came close to a catastrophic collision when it flew just 100ft over a civilian plane following an air show.
The incident, the latest in a series of near-misses involving the RAF display team, occurred after the Festival of Flight show at Biggin Hill, Kent. But details of t he incident last August were only made public last week with the publication of a report by the UK Airprox Board, which investigates near-misses in UK air space.
The report blamed t he Red Arrows pilot and said ‘safety had been much reduced below the norm’. Investigators also expressed concern that plans to install a collision- warning system in the 40- year- old Hawk T1 jets used by the Red Arrows had not yet been implemented.
There have been at least two other near- misses involving the Red Arrows in recent years, including one when a team of nine jets came within two seconds of a collision with a Boeing 737 passenger plane returning from Spain in 2009.
The latest incident happened after ten of the Red Arrows jets lined up to leave Biggin Hill at ten-second intervals following the display.
The report said that the lead aircraft took off and veered left while waiting for the rest of the formation to follow him back to t heir base at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire. But the RAF pilot failed to see a four-seater Cessna C172 before he soared over it.
The pilot of the lead Hawk was flying at 1,400ft when the light aircraft was ‘ seen below and slightly to the left of the nose’. When he realised what had happened, the pilot radioed a warning to his colleagues on the ground and turned on his smoke stream to alert them to the Cessna. Analysis of radar later showed that at one point the jet was just 100ft above the Cessna, according to the report.
Local aircraft had been warned of the presence of the Red Arrows. The warning said the jets would be taking off at 5.55pm, but the lead Hawk was in the air at 4.49pm. The report said the Cessna pilot had warned his passengers to keep an eye out for the Red Arrows before he saw the first jet pass up in front of him. The report concluded that Biggin Hill air traffic controllers could have made ‘more efforts’ to seek air traffic information before the Red Arrows took off.
It added that the RAF pilots could have been alerted to the Cessna if contact had been made with area air traffic controllers at nearby Farnborough. The near-miss was blamed on ‘a non-sighting by the Hawk pilot’, but the report said both pilots had ‘an equal responsibility for collision avoidance’.
The report said investigators were ‘heartened’ that plans to implement a collision- warning system was being considered for ‘some point in the future’. But it expressed ‘disappointment that there was no fixed time frame for this yet’.
Another UK Airprox Board report revealed how a Red Arrows jet passed 300ft over a light aircraft near RAF Scampton in March last year.