You don't get much closer than that without the undercarriage of the aircraft clipping the other one - then we see a catastrophe on the runway

Chris Yates Jane's Transport

The British Airways 747 had been cleared to land on the same runway that a British Midland jet, taking 89 passengers to Belgium in April last year, was using to take off.

The jumbo, carrying 381 passengers from Japan, came within seconds of a potentially catastrophic collision with the Airbus before the controller realised the danger, an Air Accident Investigation Branch report said.

Click here to see how the incident happened.

Air expert Kieran Daly warned that near misses would happen more often unless congestion was eased.

Mr Daly, the editor of the website Air Transport Intelligence, said: "We have reached a stage now where UK airports are operating at the absolute limits of their capacity.

'Freakish occurrence'

"The result is a system where, if something fairly small goes wrong, then the consequences can be very nasty indeed."

Chris Yates, aviation safety and security editor for Jane's Transport, told BBC News Online the Heathrow incident had been a very serious near miss.

"It was a freakish occurrence. You don't get much closer than that without the undercarriage of the aircraft clipping the other one - then we see a catastrophe on the runway.

"Heathrow is a very busy airport with one of the highest traffic densities and it demands of controllers a much higher degree of attention than perhaps other similar [sites]."

The AAIB report, commissioned because of the extreme seriousness of the incident, criticised the "inappropriate actions" of a supervising controller.

Surprised crew

A 28-year-old female air traffic control trainee was controlling take-offs on the runway at the time, under the supervision of a 35-year-old male controller, the report said.

The British Midland plane was still on the runway for take-off when the British Airways plane was instructed to go round it at a late stage, coming within 112ft of the British Midland plane and its surprised crew who reported the incident.

The mentor and trainee were relieved from duty five minutes after the incident.

The report said no criticism could be made of the trainee's performance during the near miss.

Previous incident

But it said when the situation became apparent, her mentor's initial actions, on taking control of the radio communications, were inappropriate.

The man had been selected as an on-the-job training instructor in 1999 but had said he did not particularly enjoy his job.

He had been involved in an incident in April 1999, in which he cleared a Boeing 757 to cross the runway in front of a Boeing 747.

The situation was resolved after the pilot of the departing aircraft queried his clearance.

Training revised

It is understood the controller has now been "demoted" to a less busy airport.

Ian Findlay, aviation officer of the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, said controllers faced "many stresses" and added that there was a "dire need" for more trained controllers.

The AAIB report also suggested the system for selecting on-the-job training instructors at Heathrow was flawed at the time of the incident but has subsequently been revised.

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