A small aircraft landed on the runway at Malaga Airport in Spain as a Ryanair flight with 114 people on board was taking off at the same time, an investigation has revealed.
An inquiry by the Spanish Civil Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Commission (CIAIAC) reported details of the safety incident at Malaga Airport on October 23, 2020.
A report by CIAIAC found there was just 0.9 nautical miles between the two aircraft – a distance travelled in just a few seconds – on the same runway at the closest point.
The minimum separation recommended is 1.7 nautical miles.
It detailed how the Ryanair Boeing 737-800 aircraft had already begun its take-off as a Spanish-registered Beechcraft B200 plane with five people on board landed on the runway behind it.
Investigators calculated that the Ryanair flight was on a take-off run at a speed of 140 knots (260km/h), while the Beechcraft plane was coming into land at a speed of 120 knots (222km/h).
The CIAIAC report said there were no injuries, while neither aircraft sustained any damage.
The crew of the Beechcraft aircraft said they reduced speed as much as possible to accommodate the departing Ryanair flight.
They said they were cleared to land as they passed over the threshold of the runway.
The crew said they had the Ryanair flight in sight at all times and were ready to perform an evasive manoeuvre if necessary.
The Ryanair flight crew said they were unaware of the incident as they had not received any information about it from the air traffic controller.
The investigation concluded that the incident occurred “due to poor landing and take-off planning.”
It said such a failure led to an aircraft being cleared to land on a runway already occupied by another on take-off without respecting the minimum separation requirements.
The report said the planned take-off window for the Ryanair flight was insufficient.
However, it stated the workload of the air traffic controller was not a contributory factor.
It noted that the air traffic controller responsible for both flights had used different languages to communicate with the pilots of the two aircraft which had not helped the situational awareness of the Ryanair pilots.
The report found he had also failed to specify a holding point in his taxi instruction to the Ryanair crew.
The CIAIAC issued three safety recommendations arising out of the investigation and other similar incidents involving a loss of separation between aircraft at Malaga airport.
It noted there had been 43 separate incidents involving a loss of separation between aircraft at Malaga Airport since January 2019, including eight incidents where air traffic controllers had to intervene to prevent two aircraft from being on the runway at the same time.
The CIAIAC described 13 incidents as “major events.”
The aviation authority noted that despite implementation of an action plan in February 2021 to reduce the occurrence of such incidents, there were subsequently 10 new incidents between July 2021 and April 2022.
CIAIAC has called on the Spanish aviation authority, Enaire, to introduce additional measures to reduce the risk of loss of separation incidents between aircraft at Malaga and to ensure compliance with the use of English in air traffic control instructions.
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