Secret report reveals serious flaws in air control in Portugal
A report by the Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Accidents with Aircraft and Railway Accidents (GPIAAF), whose content was revealed this Friday by the expressrevealed two serious failures in Portugal’s air traffic control, which almost resulted in accidents, in the space of little more than a year.
On the night of April 27 last year, a Boeing 737 cargo was 300 meters horizontally and 150 meters vertically from the Follow Me airport vehicle when taking off from Porto towards Belgium.
A little over a year later, on the morning of May 13, Ponta Delgada airport experienced a similar episode, when a TAP Airbus 321 was authorized to land when a Follow Me was on the right line of the runway – plane and vehicle separated by 280 meters.
In the incidents there was only one controller in the tower, when both should have been at work plus four elements in Porto and two more in Ponta Delgada. And it wasn’t up to the decision of both operators, also supervisors, who signed fictitious presences in the workplace, which were remunerated.
“In each situation, the accident was only avoided by exceptional circumstances”, indicates the document of more than 100 pages, still under seal.
The report states that the controller in Porto “was in position for approximately four hours without observing the mandatory rest times; the fourth member of the team, although on the duty roster, was dismissed by the controller (supervisor) under his prerogative and assumption that, residing nearby, he could, if necessary, be called upon at any time”.
In Ponta Delgada, “the driver, alone since she had dismissed one element and another was enjoying her rest period, informed the investigation that she was busy updating the ATIS (a computerized information system), analyzing airspace reservations, and increasingly concerned about two aircraft on converging approach paths, forgetting to signal that the runway was occupied by the maintenance team and their vehicle”.
The document denounces that “the supervisors, as an interested party, manage the composition of their teams, regardless of the appropriations closed for the period for which they were assigned”, a “systemic practice not only in the Porto tower, but also, at least, in Ponta Delgada, a permission arrangement being made for all concerned”.
“Such records complied impeccably with the maximum periods of service, intervals, as well as attendance and punctuality, which did not correspond to reality. Such distorted information was fed into the central database that manages the hours of work performed by drivers and considered the consent of the controllers and the management of the towers in Porto and Ponta Delgada, as well as the consent received by the organization, recorded and approved in its internal procedures”, states the report.