Air Accident / Incident thread

That section of airspace in the South East of the UK is very congested, I did a lot of my Multi Engine training in that part of the world, and over a 9 month period, we had 3 close encounters at various times.

One was close, Midhurst VOR doing practise holds, we ended up 150 Ft from an opposite direction BAC1-11 that was operating on the 2500 Ft base of the TMA, ATC mistake, the controller that routed it through on the base had selectively suppressed some transponder returns, so he didn't see us operating completely legally at 2400 Ft, and put the 1-11 over the top of us at 2500Ft. We were warned very late by the radar service that was monitoring us (way before TCAS), and able to take suitable avoiding action, but it was a graphic illustration of how easily things can go wrong. The TMA controller did subsequently contact my instructor and apologise for his mistake, which helped.

During ILS training at Lydd, we were flying the approach pattern at 1500 Ft in marginal weather, in communication with the controller, and had a warning about a possible conflict with an aircraft that was en route to Biggin Hill at 1500 Ft after crossing the channel. We saw it, popped out of a cloud about 200 metres in front of us, and carried on his way without even seeing us, or communicating with the airfield who's approach he'd violated, in theory in VFR, in practise, he wasn't VFR or clear of cloud. He was "spoken to" by the ATC at his arrival airfield.

Third was over Goodwood VOR, always a pressure point due to the base of the TMA, a lot of VFR traffic operates at 2000 Ft as a result, we were warned about opposite direction traffic, and adjusted our height to give us some comfort space, and he never even saw us or acknowledged the warning from the controller. We'd dropped to 1900 Ft as a precaution, and it was just as well we did, at 2000 Ft it would have been very close indeed, and the TC was capable of cruising at anything between 160 and 200 Kts depending on what you were doing, so at higher speeds, you didn't have long to see, recognise and avoid other traffic.

It was an interesting period of time, and one that did a lot to encourage me to use whatever ATC services were available even if it did increase the workload a little. A higher workload was preferable to an in flight collision! The advent of TCAS has very much changed the risks in that area, but at that time, the risk of collision in Class G airspace was a serious issue.

If you have the flight details, (times and flight number), and the approximate time of the event, it should be possible to use something like Flightradar24 to see what other aircraft were in the same area at that time. opposite directions traffic at 1000 Ft separation looks incredibly close, and the speeds are also high, so they literally appear to flash past, I know from experience that if you see a close flight, there's usually not enough time to even tell a companion in the next seat before it's gone out of sight.