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Monday, July 7, 2014

The Near Miss

In section 2.17 of the ISO 31000 standard, an event without consequences but an event all the same can be classified as a "near miss", "near hit" or "close call". Yesterday morning at Barcelona airport did such an event take place?

The Near Miss 
The inbound aircraft is a Boeing 767-300 from Moscow which aborted its landing when an Airbus A340 crossed the runway. The disaster from runway collisions has potentially incredible outcomes, usually the loss of both assets, passengers and crews.



July 6 Boeing 767 Near Miss at Barcelona Airport

The airport administrators have been quoted saying "the two airplanes were exactly where they were supposed to be but the emergency maneuver of the inbound flight tells a very different story" which can be found here [ LINK ].

Loss Data & Risk Treatment
In this case, risk managers should record this occasion as an incident with a zero materialization of consequence but an aborted landing is an exception to standard operating procedure and is an event.

In my opinion this should be treated as a potential failure of control and investigated by risk teams.  As in this situation and so often the case, null events are passed off by operators as nothing happened, we shouldn't worry, move on but what we have here are potentially some of the drivers for a catastrophe and that shouldn't taken so lightly.

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