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Southwest Airlines Pilot Takes Evasive Action to Avoid Collision, 2 Injured

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DieselDragRacer

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Posts
11,056
:beer:



BURBANK, Calif. — The Federal Aviation Administration says two flight attendants were injured when a Southwest Airlines pilot took sudden evasive action to avoid a collision with a private plane near Burbank over the weekend.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said Tuesday the pilot of Southwest Flight 2534 from Las Vegas got an automated alert because it was briefly on a collision course with another aircraft. The plane was flying at about 6,000 feet Saturday about 20 miles away from Bob Hope Airport.


Gregor says the Southwest pilot made some sudden maneuvers to avoid the other plane, which was about two miles away. He says one Southwest flight attendant suffered a broken shoulder, the other was bruised.
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.
 
I wasn't there so maybe his situation was somehow different, but I've had a couple of RA's and never had to manuever the plane abruptly to comply. Not much different than a normal climb or descent.
 
I'm surprised there aren't more incidents like this in Southern California. We get hundreds of RAs alone going into LGB and BUR (near Van Nuys). Bug smashers are dangerous in this region, remember Cerritos mid-air?
 
I'm pretty sure RA's are designed to give you guidance that won't exceed 1G. I used to work for a foreign carrier that would have us do repeated RA maneuvers in the sim so that we would not pull more than 1.25G's. It was really amazing to me how little you had to push or pull the yolk to comply with the green band on the TCAS panel.

Some gouge they taught us:

1 degree pitch at .80 mach = 800 ft./minute
" .70 mach = 700 ft./minute
" .60 mach = 600 ft./minute

etc... so to get into the green band on a RA you rarely have to exceed 1000 feet/minute, which equates to just about 1 - 2 degree's pitch change. Not much.

Admitedly, until I did this over and over again, I just asumed an RA was an "agressive" maneuver. Well it isn't.

That being said, I wasn't there and everyone lived to fly again, so that is ultimately a good thing.
 
I'm sorry... After quiet flight's post, I'm not sure what we are talking about....




btw, they're real..... and they're spectacular!
 
Wow, classy post. Nice Monday Morning QBing, and a nice show of respect for a fellow company pilot.

Good post, but don't limit it to fellow COMPANY pilot. He is a fellow pilot and we weren't there. I'm guessing he had a good reason for the level of evasive action and if he did over it do it, so what, none of us are perfect and it could happen to anyone. I would like to see how the finger pointers would react if they see a small airplane that appears on an immediate collision course and see how quick they react. I'm guessing any of us would have done the same thing.
 
Based on the numerous cabin crew injuries that occour with TCAS RA's, it appears that most, if not all, major airlines do an inadequate job of training their pilots on how to react to RA's.
Just telling someone its a 1G manuver vs practing, uplanned, startleing events are quite different.
Its just sad that these needless injuries continue to occour.
If the report is correct, the aircraft never got closer than 2 miles and now a flight attendant has a broken back.
 

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