German Challenger business jet encounters A380 wake

smurfjed

http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3&opt=0

An Emirates Airbus A380-800, most likely registration A6-EUL performing flight EK-412 from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Sydney,NS (Australia), was enroute at FL350 about 630nm southeast of Muscat (Oman) and about 820nm northwest of Male (Maldives) at about 08:40Z when a business jet passed underneath in opposite direction. The A380 continued the flight to Sydney without any apparent incident and landed safely.

The business jet, a MHS Aviation (Munich) Canadair Challenger 604 registration D-AMSC performing flight MHV-604 from Male (Maldives) to Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) with 9 people on board, was enroute over the Arabian Sea when an Airbus A380-800 was observed by the crew passing 1000 feet above. After passing underneath the A380 at about 08:40Z the crew lost control of the aircraft as result of wake turbulence from the A380 and was able to regain control of the aircraft only after losing about 10,000 feet. The airframe experienced very high G-Loads during the upset, a number of occupants received injuries during the upset. After the crew managed to stabilize the aircraft the crew decided to divert to Muscat (Oman), entered Omani Airspace at 14:10L (10:10Z) declaring emergency and reporting injuries on board and continued for a landing in Muscat at 15:14L (11:14Z) without further incident. A number of occupants were taken to a hospital, one occupant was reported with serious injuries. The aircraft received damage beyond repair and was written off.

Oman's Civil Aviation Authority had told Omani media on Jan 8th 2017, that a private German registered aircraft had performed an emergency landing in Muscat on Jan 7th 2017 declaring emergency at 14:10L (10:10Z) and landing in Muscat at 15:14L (11:14Z). The crew had declared emergency due to injuries on board and problems with an engine (a number of media subsequently reported the right hand engine had failed, another number of media reported the left hand engine had failed).

This happened a few weeks ago, it was being discussed in various forums but it's only now that it's appearing in the public domain.

Judging by the number of wake encounters involving A380's, it might be time for RVSM to be revisited.

JCX BXC

This was posted in the incident thread a while back.

The_Wanderer

<snip>

How much separation should be allowed for each aircraft to pass each other?

smurfjed

@JCX BXC, I didn't find any reference to this in the accident/incident thread, can you help me out?

Luke-m

JCX BXC wrote: »

Apologies I was infact incorrect in that regard, must have read it elsewhere.

You did read it here. Its post 375 on the the emirates a380 thread. But there was no discussion involved.

smurfjed

Found it
Doesn't anyone find it scary that the A380 can throw an aircraft around like that?

[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Virgin Australia B738 near Bali on Sep 14th 2012, wake turbulence from A380[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Air France A320 and Emirates A388 near Frankfurt on Oct 14th 2011, wake turbulence[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Accident: British Airways A320 and Qantas A388 near Braunschweig on Oct 16th 2011, wake turbulence injures 4[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Report: Antonov A124, Singapore A388 and Air France B744 near Frankfurt on Feb 10th 2011, wake turbulence by A388 causes TCAS RA[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Report: REX SF34 at Sydney on Nov 3rd 2008, wake turbulence injures one[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Armavia A320 near Tiblisi on Jan 11th 2009, turbulence at cruise level thought to be A380 wake[/font]

These events happened up to 25 nms behind the aircraft.

billie1b

smurfjed wrote: »

Found it
Doesn't anyone find it scary that the A380 can throw an aircraft around like that?

[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Virgin Australia B738 near Bali on Sep 14th 2012, wake turbulence from A380[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Air France A320 and Emirates A388 near Frankfurt on Oct 14th 2011, wake turbulence[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Accident: British Airways A320 and Qantas A388 near Braunschweig on Oct 16th 2011, wake turbulence injures 4[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Report: Antonov A124, Singapore A388 and Air France B744 near Frankfurt on Feb 10th 2011, wake turbulence by A388 causes TCAS RA[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Report: REX SF34 at Sydney on Nov 3rd 2008, wake turbulence injures one[/font]
[font=Times, "Time New Roman", sans-serif]Incident: Armavia A320 near Tiblisi on Jan 11th 2009, turbulence at cruise level thought to be A380 wake[/font]

These events happened up to 25 nms behind the aircraft.

Challeneger v A380 is pretty much like a bike v 40ft truck, MTOW of a challenger is about 4% of the MTOW of an A380, it'd be thrown around like a ping pong ball in an air mix machine :eek: :eek:

Pat Dunne

JCX BXC wrote: »

In case anyone took my comment up wrong (moderation certainly did, whether deliberately or not), I meant no back-seat moderation or whatever I was slated for, but I'm sure Smurfjed would be interested in any discussion or comments made on that issue elsewhere.

I would also be wrong to say it was posted there, I must have read it elsewhere.

Hmmm.... I would have also sworn that I read this very same item as a topic some weeks ago on this forum as well.

Capt Bligh of HMS Bounty, while flogging sailors for small misdemeanours, he is said to have declared: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

Tenger

I deleted a few posts just to declutter the thread. I left the statement about the incident being posted elsewhere just for clarity, but got rid of the OT talk after that.

Tenger

Pat Dunne wrote: »

Capt Bligh of HMS Bounty, while flogging sailors for small misdemeanours, he is said to have declared: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

You were asking for heavy handed modding with one of your multiple reports yesterday yet you post something like this up?

Pat Dunne

Tenger wrote: »

You were asking for heavy handed modding with one of your multiple reports yesterday yet you post something like this up?

Where relievent this just plain over kill and suffication of the forum.
And what I include in a report on a thread especially the Rescue116 topic is confidential and not for discussion in public or to be used as a throw away comment

<MOD Note> User given infraction/ban for not following forum rules re disputes

smurfjed

Very scary photos.... certainly shows that its time to increase the use of SLOP

Irish Steve

That is indeed not "a mild upset", Airbus have talked for years about the efficiency of their wing designs, clearly they have managed to optimise the 380 wing to get the best performance for the airframe, but it would now appear that the disturbance that it leaves in its wake at all phases of flight is not something to be trifled with, I would hope that the regulators are watching and learning from these events, with a view to changing the minimum separations that are applied to the A380 aircraft.

I will always remember the shock and confusion in the voice of a PPL at Exeter many years ago when he called "downwind", to be told that he was No 2 to Concorde, and required 8 nautical miles vortex wake separation behind Concorde, which in PPL terms meant he was going to have to fly outbound for a massive distance before turning final, effectively about 12 minutes from Landing, and at the time, he was less than 2 miles from the runway, but when I look at the damage above, I wonder what is a "safe" distance behind a 380, whatever the official figures might say.

Irish Steve

Irish Steve wrote: »

That is indeed not "a mild upset", Airbus have talked for years about the efficiency of their wing designs, clearly they have managed to optimise the 380 wing to get the best performance for the airframe, but it would now appear that the disturbance that it leaves in its wake at all phases of flight is not something to be trifled with, I would hope that the regulators are watching and learning from these events, with a view to changing the minimum separations that are applied to the A380 aircraft.

They recently revised separation downwards. While minimum separation behind a medium is 3nms it still hasn't stopped other mediums from being upset significantly when travelling up to 10nms behind a medium.

Gaoth Laidir

It depends on wind and temperature/humidity conditions at height. We can see this in the shapes of contrails. On certain occasions these contrails take on a contorted turbulent form (Crow Instability), which is a sign of vigorous wake vortices. Other times windshear dissipates them more readily. So to define separation limits would not be as simple as saying X vertical and Y lateral, unless X and Y are the absolute worst case scenarios.

Comhrá

This Youtube gives a good impression of the potential severity of large aircraft wingtip vortices. Almost like a horizontal tornado

Irish Steve

Deleted User wrote: »

They recently revised separation downwards. While minimum separation behind a medium is 3nms it still hasn't stopped other mediums from being upset significantly when travelling up to 10nms behind a medium.

I wonder if that is as a result of the much wider use now of much larger wing tip devices that produce a much more defined tip vortex, they clearly improve the airframe performance, but the downside would appear to be the trail they leave behind them.

The 757 was always a problem in that respect, long before it got fitted with wing fences, they used to cause upsets that were more frequent and stronger than would have been expected for their size, and we now have wing fences on the 737 family, and larger fences on the latest 320 family, which I suspect has had the downside of making them a more disruptive aircraft than they used to be.

It's one of the reasons for discouraging light GA aircraft from places like Dublin, the separation required for a GA aircraft causes so many problems with runway slot use, and until the second parallel runway is built and in use, there's no easy way to get round that.

smurfjed

This is the actual aircraft now sitting in Muscat.