The runway collision at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport

March 2000 - Air France decided on ‘English-only policy’ but, due to reaction in France, ‘English-only policy’ was abandoned in some days.

Seven weeks later on 25/5/00 there was runway collision at Charles de Gaulle airport. The co-pilot of a Streamline Aviation Shorts 330 freighter was killed when the wingtip of an Air Liberte Boeing MD-83, that had been cleared for its take-off, cut into the cockpit of the 330, when it was entering the active runway. On taxying frequency all flights were speaking French except one, the British cargo plane which was cleared to line up and wait. Visibility was poor. Air Liberte charter flight was cleared to the same runway as the British plane but, as ATC was in French, British crew did not hear instructions to another plane to take off from the same runway. There was a collision on the runway. The investigation report blamed ATC for allowing two planes onto runway at the same time. The controller was talking to Air Liberte in French and to Streamline in English. The Streamline pilots did not understand French. If English had been spoken, British crew would probably have realised ATC's mistake.

 54 Exsercise 3.

Kegworth crash

The plane left London Heathrow for Belfast on Sunday evening 8/1/89. It was a new plane and had been in service for just two months. The crew had only just finished a course on the plane's instruments. A fan blade in the left hand engine shattered and punctured a fuel line.

The captain thought the vibration gauges were unreliable but on this plane they worked perfectly. The left side passengers saw the left hand engine on fire. Three cabin staff also saw flames coming from the left hand engine but no one told the flight crew.

There was smoke in the passenger cabin which made the first officer think the right hand engine was on fire because in earlier 737s air came into the cabin only from the right hand engine. However, in the 737-­400 air comes into the cabin from both engines. So the first officer told the captain the fire was in the RH engine. The captain throttled down and subsequently switched off the RH engine.

He reduced power to the left hand engine in preparation for an emergency landing at East Midlands airport. This stopped the fire and vibrations, so persuading the captain he had done the correct thing as the surging and vibrations from the LH engine ceased. But the surging and vibrations started again when power was increased for the emergency landing at East Midlands airport.

The left hand engine cut out at 900 feet. The captain asked the co-pilot to restart the right hand engine but this was not possible as the airspeed was too slow. Ground proximity warnings came seconds before impact.

There were 88 survivors because there was no fire - fuel drained away down the embankment.

 55 Exercise 4.

Flying fur

It is true: on 9 August, 2004 a flight from Brussels for Vienna with 58 passengers and four crew was forced to return when an "aggressive" cat somehow ended up on the flight deck. The cat, belonging to a passenger, had escaped its cage when its owner fell asleep and sneaked through the flight deck door when lunch was being delivered; the animal started hissing when the crew tried to force it out from its hiding place. The captain elected to return, having consulted his Operation manual and discovered (no doubt to his complete shock) "there are no standing rules for pilots on how to handle aggressive cats in the cockpit".

There is no truth to the rumours, now circulating, that a follow-up memo is doing the rounds advising aircrew to the "dangers of pussy on the flight deck".

 56 Exercise 5.