Tag: near miss

Ducks at Skiathos Airport

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Not the bird type of duck. That might possibly be dangerous:

But then this could have been quite nasty as well.

Skiathos is one of those places where the end of the runway is pretty much the start of a beach, and onlookers do gather to watch the shallow landings there. You might remember the infamous Maho Beach on St Maarten and the KLM 747s coming in to land there (webcam here, although the 747s don’t do that route anymore). But if anything, the south end of Skiathos Airport runway is even closer to the beach than even that:

Yes, that’s the Aegean Sea on the left and the runway on the right. We’re probably looking at about 30m between the edge of the apron and the edge of the water. I would measure the exact distance for you, but Google Earth has blurred the whole airport complex out in case the terrorists can’t work out how to use its sister app, Google Maps. Or… just go there.

Nothing to see here.

Bizarre.

Anyway, all of this preamble is because a Wizzair A321 Neo almost killed some onlookers by coming in PROPERLY LOW this week:

And that’s where the ducking comes in. The video is well worth a watch (plane lands at about 1 minute if you’re really pushed for time) and it also includes footage of the “famous” famous Air Italy 737-800 approach of 2013. But this one is definitely lower.

I don’t think anyone would have got hit if they hadn’t ducked (although Robert Wadlow would have got a new parting), but if you slow the video down to 0.25x speed and hit pause at the right place, you can see that the wheels are literally only 5m off the ground as they (just) pass over the guys standing at the Armco. (reference: A321 Neo wheel fully inflated is 1.2m diameter)

That’s a bit too close for comfort.

Quack.

Near-miss probe begins

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Remember the Three German Warships Off Struisbaai? The Three German Warships that weren’t really doing anything very sinister? That was, until they tried to blow up a fishing boat with 10 people on board later that evening.

These things happen.

Captain Jaco Theunissen, spokesman for the SA Navy’s joint operations division, said on Saturday: “The South African National Defence Force acknowledges that the unfortunate incident that was reported on in the Cape Times on Friday, March 27 did take place.”

The navy has said warnings about naval exercises are sent out as navigation warnings on radio and to all fishing clubs and harbours. Day has said he got no warning.

To be fair to the Three German Warships, it’s actually unclear whether it was one of them or their SA Navy counterparts which fired the shots.

Fishing boat skipper, Anthony Day (perhaps understandably), isn’t happy though:

“…no one from the navy has contacted me. It is very disturbing that you can nearly take someone’s life away and you don’t even contact them.
I understand they don’t want legal implications, but if I shot at someone in the street, I would be locked up, and here nothing happens.”

Fair point, but if you fired a dual-purpose 62-caliber, 76-millimeter gun manufactured by OTO Melara at someone in the street, there would be other questions to be asked as well, like “Where on earth did you get that massive gun from?” and “Wasn’t there a house at the end of this road – you know – where that heap of smouldering rubble is now?”

And then, yes, you’d be locked up.

Seriously though, this was an unbelievably careless incident, which could have had huge implications and led to loss of life, and thus it needs proper, thorough investigation by someone senior in the naval hierarchy. I guess that means they’ll be bringing in the big guns.

Again.