Notification
On Tuesday, October 21 st 2014, an incident occurred on the ground at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Two aircraft passed each other quite close while taxing to their gates. LVNL is conducting its own investigation.
Incident investigation
The primary responsibility of Air Traffic Control the Netherlands is ensuring the separation of aircraft from other aircraft and ground vehicles. All reported safety events that occur at Air Traffic Control the Netherlands are investigated with the objective to learn and improve, and thus reduce the probability of similar incidents in the future.
Summary of investigation results
In the evening of Tuesday, October 21 st 2014, an Airbus 320 (A320) landed on runway 27. Because his appointed gate is still occupied, air traffic control (ATC) instructed the A320 to park the aircraft temporarily at holding position P1. After instructing the A320 a planned replacement of the ground controller is prepared. But before leaving his position the ground controller sees the A320 mistakenly taxiing to P3 instead of P1. This change in holding position however will not have any effect on the surrounding traffic and a corrective action is judged not to be necessary. In the meantime the following aircraft, an Embraer 190 (E190), landed at runway 27. The new groundcontroller in position instructs the E190 to taxi to their gate, via a route that takes the E190 in front of holding position P3. From the ground controller’s point of view, the A320 appeared to stop at P3, but the A320 continued taxiing because the crew was under the impression that they were cleared to taxi to the gate via P3. The crew of the E190 needed to suddenly stop to avoid a collision . Both aircraft continued their way to their gates uneventfully.
Classification: serious incident