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[Doctor Gollum]

Apparently nobody knew the DASH8 was on the runway because it doesn't have ADSB. Hmm...

Still, I saw the video and thought everybody would be dead, so kudos to the cabin crew for getting everyone out. (and the passengers for not being bell ends about it)

Absolutely, job very well done by the crew. Training is such that you're mindful of what could go wrong so that when it does, you're mentally ready to act.

Culture can help with discipline but seeing that out of the window
is a pretty effective motivator for getting off sharpish.

Does make you wonder how they failed to hold short or how the JAL crew missed it. A late go around might have saved the 350 and been a wake up for the Dash 8 crew. The official report will make for an interesting read...

We operate our 350s with three flight crew... An extra pair of eyes is never a bad thing.

[Kevin Wood]

I thought major airports had warning systems to avoid runway incursions these days?

Still, nothing is infallible in aviation.

[Rangie]

The total loss of control in London, another young lad stabbed to death on New year's Eve at Primrose Hill, idiot Khan still babbling on about safety is paramount, he needs to be gone.

[Doctor Gollum]

I thought major airports had warning systems to avoid runway incursions these days?

Still, nothing is infallible in aviation.

Indeed, and even if the Dash 8 wasn't electronically visible, safeguards should have been in place to keep a closer eye on it ... Taxi to point ABC hold and report etc, plus informing the inbound aircraft of the presence of the Dash 8 not to mention allowing additional time/space to minimise the risks of operating a paramilitary aircraft in close proximity to commercial traffic.

In any case looking up the glide slope from the threshold the A350 would have been blindingly obvious, they're pretty well lit and not exactly a small aircraft. Somebody screwed up and that was compounded by other factors... Sometimes the holes in the cheese* line up perfectly.

*https://skybrary.aero/articles/james-reason-hf-model#:~:text=The%20Swiss%20Cheese%20model%20of,gaps%20in%2Dbetween%20each%20slice.

[TheBoy]

Well the web site I post a blog on went down for an update, turns out the backup wasn't working since 2019 so have lost it all along with a lot of folks stuff that joined after then. They cant even log on, hopefuly when they rebuild the site it will return to a better format as its running on a very old setup now. For the tech folks on here it should have saved to a separate "memory" but since it last got updated its been saving to the server so it all got dumped when it was turned off.

Its the Agile way now.

You'll be pleased to know that OOF is backed up with a far better regime, with the dailys (but not hourlys) sent offsite.  Although I'm pretty certain it was probably a dozen or more years ago since we had to restore from backup

[TheBoy]

Apparently nobody knew the DASH8 was on the runway because it doesn't have ADSB. Hmm...

As a model aircraft flyer, I have to jump through so many hoops and obey so many rules, and if the CAA get their way allowing anyone to access all might flight logs to grass me up if I make a mistake.  Yet manned flights of small aircraft appear to be a free-for-all.  Especially for the arseholes who fly in and out of Hinton in the Hedges.

[TheBoy]

Still, I saw the video and thought everybody would be dead, so kudos to the cabin crew for getting everyone out. (and the passengers for not being bell ends about it)

I've seen the vid, and its not clear what happened, not helped by the TV media more interested in repeating the vid over and over rather than explain how/what/why.

Am I to assume the Airbus was coming into land, and the DeHav taxied onto the runway to take off?  Wouldn't the Airbus pilot have seen this, and had time to respond/abort?  (The engines would take time to build up thrust, and depending how late in the landing, he might already be flared/nose up restricting visibility?)

Or is it the case, no matter what, there was nothing the Airbus pilot could do?

[Doctor Gollum]

It's been suggested elsewhere that the Dash 8 was turning into the runway a ways along it for a short take off (the Dash 8 being a pretty effective STOL aircraft) just as the 350 main gear touched down. Effective they dropped the nose gear into the back of the Dash 8.

Some variables which depend on how the 350 was configured for landing and some will be airline rather than type specific...

If the thrust reversers on the A350 have an auto mode, then once the mains touched, then the WOW system would have automatically pulled the throttles back and deployed the reversers... At which point TOGA override would have been impossible. (This is one thing that Ryanair flight crews seem to do quite often that is actually quite dangerous... Activating the reversers between flare and touchdown...removes all options).
However, the engines showed no sign of the reversers having been deployed, so the throttles were being manually operated. In which case, hitting the the TOGA switch would have opened the throttles and the aircraft would accelerate and climb without any other input... The configuration of the wings for landing makes for a decent amount of lift with modest throttle so it's an almost exponential reaction... More throttle = more thrust = more airspeed = more lift. Done early enough, they might have swatted the Dash 8 with the tail. Have had a couple of go arounds after the mains have touched, so it is a reasonable thing to do.

The A350 flight crew should have seen something unusual ahead of them even if it didn't register as an aircraft... Runway lights blocked from view would have been one thing, lighting on the Dash 8 another. And the landing lights on the A350 would have illuminated from a reasonable distance, although ~130knots wouldn't take too long to be on top of it.

Can see the blame being laid squarely onto the Dash 8 crew and controllers with some responsibility to the A350 crew for not seeing the Dash 8 earlier.

Think of it as a car pulling out of a side road onto a dual carriageway a couple of hundred yards in front of another car without looking.  Yes it's their fault for not looking but the driver of the car on the dual carriageway should be looking far enough ahead to anticipate it and react accordingly.

[LC0112G]

Apparently nobody knew the DASH8 was on the runway because it doesn't have ADSB. Hmm...

That's a mis-understanding of how ADSB is used.

There is full ADSB-out whereby an aircraft transmits its lat-long when interrogated by a SSR radar source. This is what things like FR24 rely on to track aircraft. But there is also an earlier standard (Mode S) where the aircraft replies to normal Mode A/C/S SSR interrogations, but does not respond to ADSB position requests.

Most military/government aircraft do not respond to ADSB position requests, and hence don't show up on FR24 and the like. They will show up on the airports own SSR radar screens due to the Mode S responses.

There are some 'open world' tracking sites such as ADSB Exchange that support something called MLAT. This allows non ADSB-out aircraft to be located by triangulation. However, for that to work it needs at least 3 receivers to be getting signals from the aircraft, and in that area of Japan it appears coverage is not good enough to track anything by MLAT below about 1500'. So the coast guard plane doesn't show on any publically accessible trcking sites.

Just because you and I can't 'see' it on FR24 does not mean that ATC cannot see it on their screens.

[LC0112G]

It's been suggested elsewhere that the Dash 8 was turning into the runway a ways along it for a short take off (the Dash 8 being a pretty effective STOL aircraft) just as the 350 main gear touched down. Effective they dropped the nose gear into the back of the Dash 8.

Some variables which depend on how the 350 was configured for landing and some will be airline rather than type specific...

If the thrust reversers on the A350 have an auto mode, then once the mains touched, then the WOW system would have automatically pulled the throttles back and deployed the reversers... At which point TOGA override would have been impossible. (This is one thing that Ryanair flight crews seem to do quite often that is actually quite dangerous... Activating the reversers between flare and touchdown...removes all options).
However, the engines showed no sign of the reversers having been deployed, so the throttles were being manually operated. In which case, hitting the the TOGA switch would have opened the throttles and the aircraft would accelerate and climb without any other input... The configuration of the wings for landing makes for a decent amount of lift with modest throttle so it's an almost exponential reaction... More throttle = more thrust = more airspeed = more lift. Done early enough, they might have swatted the Dash 8 with the tail. Have had a couple of go arounds after the mains have touched, so it is a reasonable thing to do.

The A350 flight crew should have seen something unusual ahead of them even if it didn't register as an aircraft... Runway lights blocked from view would have been one thing, lighting on the Dash 8 another. And the landing lights on the A350 would have illuminated from a reasonable distance, although ~130knots wouldn't take too long to be on top of it.

Can see the blame being laid squarely onto the Dash 8 crew and controllers with some responsibility to the A350 crew for not seeing the Dash 8 earlier.

Think of it as a car pulling out of a side road onto a dual carriageway a couple of hundred yards in front of another car without looking.  Yes it's their fault for not looking but the driver of the car on the dual carriageway should be looking far enough ahead to anticipate it and react accordingly.

There were experiments carried out at LAX a few years back after a similar incident. Dash-8's and similar are incredibly difficult to see in the dark against all the other airport and runway lighting. Also SOP is not to turn on anti-collision lights and runway spot lamps until you're lined up and ready to depart - so the Dash 8 may not even have been strobing. It would have been a miriacle if the A350 drivers had seen the Dash8 in time to go-around.

My bet is the Dash8 crew misunderstood an ATC instruction to "Line up after landing A350" (or similar) and pulled onto the runway infront of the landing airliner.

[Doctor Gollum]

Just watched Blancolirio's take on it and looking at the view down the runway, I can see how that might have been invisible from behind but it would have been clearer from the side as it approached the runway.

https://youtu.be/y_sQ1L_xPmo?si=U3zcpJGWJBpLP9VN

Watch closely and you can see both the strobes and anti collision beacons of the Dash 8 as it starts to turn onto the runway just as the A350 touches down It's about level with the tip of the tail of the R2D2 ANA 777.

The A350 touched down a little short too, but that's a moot point.

And again, from the A350 CCOM, all slides are designed to be used regardless of aircraft attitude or pitch assuming it is more or less the right way up. What's more impressive is that two of the three slides deployed are only single lane slides (the front ones).

[LC0112G]

We operate our 350s with three flight crew... An extra pair of eyes is never a bad thing.

But "you" don't operate A350's on domestic routes. I did about a dozen flights in Japan a decade or so ago - and all were on B747-400's. They have a very high passenger rate between relatively close cities. Basically no A320 sized (180-200 pax) commuter stuff - it's all done with 350-400 seat B777/A350's even on short sectors. No need for ETOPS style crewing on that.

[Doctor Gollum]

I understand where you're coming from, I suspect that we do it for fatigue management purposes on longer sectors rather than ETOPS.

It's the little details that make the difference, and had anyone in the flight deck of the Dash 8 looked right, they should have seen the A350 on finals and could have clarified their clearance, although that might not have been a culturally 'correct' thing to do.

But it will all come out in the wash.

[LC0112G]

I understand where you're coming from, I suspect that we do it for fatigue management purposes on longer sectors rather than ETOPS.

It's the little details that make the difference, and had anyone in the flight deck of the Dash 8 looked right, they should have seen the A350 on finals and could have clarified their clearance, although that might not have been a culturally 'correct' thing to do.

But it will all come out in the wash.

Latest 'rumours' are that...

1) The Dash8 had been lined up on the runway for 45-60 seconds before the impact. If correct, then even if the co-pilot had looked up the approach before entering the active, there would have appeared to be space/time - the A350 would have been 2-3 miles away which is fine in VFR conditions.

2) Dash 8 strobes were not on, because SOP is to turn them on only once take of clearance is received. TO clearance was not issued.

3) The A350 and Dash 8 were on different Tower Frequencies. These may or may not have been bandboxed (joined transmissions so one freq can be re-heard on the other). If they were not bandboxed, then neither plane would have been aware of clearances issued to the other.

4) Some runway and taxiway lighting NOTAMED as in-op - Specifically the STOP markers at the intersection of C5 and RWY.

5) ATC clearances in English perhaps mis-understood by non native English speakers.

Does sound like the holes in the cheese are lining up. All very sad - the sort of thing that shouldn't happen, but there for the grace of god...

[Doctor Gollum]

To be clear, this is a text conversation not an argument 

To the first... 2-3 miles at ~130 knots isn't very long but is an eternity to be sat there.

2. It isn't clear due to the camera distance and glare, but the Dash 8 lights are visible, just. Including the strobes. The nose gear light comes on just as the A350 lights it up. (Alot clearer watching it on a big screen tellybox, not so much on a smaller screen.)

3. Could be a contributing factor depending on how the controller workload is distributed.

4. Information that both controller and Dash 8 crew should have been alert to. Especially if using if for a sneaky departure. Safer to use the taxiway to the threshold. If this is the case then extra precautions should have been in place although it may have been felt that the signage and ground markings were clear enough without.

An alternative might have been to clear them for an immediate and expedited take off using C6 or line up and wait BEHIND/AFTER the landing aircraft.

5. There are arguments either way for this.

It doesn't take alot to thread the needle of fate through the cheese. Or not. And if fate gets through, then you can drive a jumbo through it.