Posted:
Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:06 pmby Daniel
Love the "eye witnesses" accounts.
QUOTE
"It couldn't have been above a thousand feet, it was low, bloody low, never climbed at all," he said.
Another witness Alan Kirker said he first heard unusual noise. "I kept watching it and watching it."
It banked around the golf course and flew low down the lake.
"I thought, Jesus, man, it was banking almost on its side."[/quote] Off the Stuff article
Funny enough that so far there have been no passenger moans about the plane being on it's side.
Posted:
Wed Jul 28, 2010 10:37 amby HercFeend
If the following, from the report, is accurate - "Planes must depart no later than 30 minutes before twilight from the airport, which is surrounded by mountainous terrain and has no radar or runway lights." It begs the question, why, with QN being in Class D airspace, was the flight cleared by the controller to take off?
Posted:
Wed Jul 28, 2010 10:45 amby mfraser
Its because of the CAA rules - there is a specific clause which details when we can deny an aircraft a clearance. We can't deny an aircraft a clearance based soley on the light conditions - it comes back to pilot discretion. If the situation feels a little dodgy, most controllers will protect themselves by issuing a clearance such as "Cleared for takeoff, your discretion" or "With the required visibility, cleared for takeoff" etc.............
Posted:
Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:01 amby HercFeend
mfraser wrote:Its because of the CAA rules - there is a specific clause which details when we can deny an aircraft a clearance. We can't deny an aircraft a clearance based soley on the light conditions - it comes back to pilot discretion. If the situation feels a little dodgy, most controllers will protect themselves by issuing a clearance such as "Cleared for takeoff, your discretion" or "With the required visibility, cleared for takeoff" etc.............
Thanks for the clarification Fras. It's a bit of a grey area isn't it - you would think given the local rules re day light that a controller would be given the authority by CAA to prevent a flight form taking off on the grounds of safety due to the pilot breaching the local rules.....
Posted:
Wed Jul 28, 2010 9:06 pmby greaneyr
This would have just been another 'odd take-off', had a local not gone to the media over it. However, now I see Campbell Live interviewing people about "What was it really like to be on that flight out of Queenstown??" like there was some major in-flight emergency.
I'm not going to speculate about who is to blame for this until I read the CAA report, but I know that the media are inflating it as a matter of duty. They're almost making a bigger deal out of this than over the mid-air at NZFI.
I had to have a giggle at the radio news yesterday when they explained the story. "Aircraft are not permitted to fly out of Queenstown after dusk as the runway has no lights, and there is no radar". Umm... don't they have THE best radar installation in New Zealand with the multilateration set up now? Secondly... WTH does radar have to do with night flying?? I can just picture it now "Tower, Bluebird 83 lined up on 23, ready for takeoff. Could we have the runway lights off please? We don't need them now since you've got us on radar"
Posted:
Wed Jul 28, 2010 9:51 pmby mfraser
I'm told that Multi-Lat is still being trialled in NZQN as there's a few errors yet to be ironed out - its there and online but the controllers can't use it as a controlling tool just yet.
I discussed the whole issue with a couple of co-workers today and we've looked at the plates in depth. We all think that the departure was flown as required under the AIP/CAA rules - and that the exclamations of 'low flying' and 'close to terrain' are from non-aviation onlookers. Like greaneyr says, we'll have to all wait and see what comes out of the wash. I pity what must be going through the poor pilots minds right now.......
Posted:
Sat Aug 14, 2010 1:06 pmby mfraser
And hot off the press, Multi-Lateration is now operational in Queenstown.........
"Queenstown MLat went live on the 2nd of August. The NZQN MLat system represents a significant deployment for the aviation industry, and consists of six interrogators, 14 receivers and 3 retrans sites, all networked back to a cental processor in NZQN Tower."
