Incident Overview
Description
Comet G-APDN departed Manchester at 16:08 for a charter flight to Barcelona. ATC delays in the Paris area resulted in a different route to be flown. At 17:53 the pilot contacted Barcelona ACC. The aircraft was then cleared to descend from FL220 to FL90. At 17:59 the flight switched to Barcelona Approach. Barcelona Approach cleared the crew direct to the Sabadell beacon and cleared them to descend to FL60. While carrying out a left turn to a heading of 140deg, as instructed by Barcelona Approach, the crew mistakenly reported passing the Sabadell NDB. At that time another aircraft overflew Sabadell, causing the error to go unnoticed by the controller. The controller then cleared the Comet to descend to 2800 feet. At approx. 18:05 UTC the aircraft struck beech trees on the north-east slopes of the cloud-covered Les Angudes peak at an altitude of about 3800 feet and crashed. PROBABLE CAUSE: “To sum up, it can be deduced that the combination of erroneous information regarding reporting points, together with the existence of a radar echo over Sabadell NDB (coinciding with the report from the aircraft of passing that reporting point), led both the aircraft and APP to believe, erroneously, that the aircraft was already over Sabadell; this was an involuntary error (on both sides: ATC and aircraft) which was physically impossible to correct when Air Traffic Control realised it.”
Primary Cause
Radar echo over Sabadell NDB leading to incorrect reporting points and a false belief of overflying the area.Radar echo over Sabadell NDB leading to incorrect reporting points and a false belief of overflying the area.Share on:
