Aug 6th B738 and Glider Near Miss. Frankfurt

On Oct 11, 8:56*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 10/11/2010 11:44 AM, Derek C wrote: You must be a rich Yank with more money than sense! $2500 sounds like
a small fortune to a hard up Brit. Why not get airliners to fit $300
Flarm units?

Where do you get $300 FLARM units? But, that's not the problem, really -
the airliner requires certified equipment. It would be much quicker,
easier, more effective, and cheaper (for the airline company) to talk
the airline companies into putting those $2500 transponders into gliders
flying in that area. $100,000 - problem solved in one month.

The transponders could be leased to the pilots - it's not necessary for
it to be a gift. Could you afford $200/year to have a transponder in
your glider?

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarmhttp://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

Ryanair is a low cost carrier that cuts its costs down to the last
penny and treats its customers like cattle. I can't somehow see them
purchasing several thousand transponder units to give to European
glider pilots!

Derek C

Darryl Ramm wrote:
If glider pilots choose to fly near areas of high-density airline and
fast-jet traffic without a transponder and the decision would only

I hate that "who has been there first" argument nearly as much as I hate
Usenet posters who don't care to reasonably trim quotations. Anyway, in
Germany, nearly everywhere gliders have been first.

That area has been densly populated by gliders for a long time, without
any conflict whatsoever. There's a perfect international airport nearby,
Frankfurt-Main (EDDF), which coexists with the gliders without any
problem. Now Ryanair appears and chooses not to use Frankfurt-Main, but
rather fly to Frankfurt-Hahn (EDFH) instead, because it's cheaper (in
fact, ist's even subsidized...). And then Ryanair asks that gliders
should go and spend thousands of Euros for transponders, so Ryanair can
spare a few bucks in landing fees by using a subsidized airport.

On Oct 12, 2:08*am, John Smith wrote:
Darryl Ramm wrote:
If glider pilots choose to fly near areas of high-density airline and
fast-jet traffic *without a transponder and the decision would only

I hate that "who has been there first" argument nearly as much as I hate
Usenet posters who don't care to reasonably trim quotations. Anyway, in
Germany, nearly everywhere gliders have been first.

That area has been densly populated by gliders for a long time, without
any conflict whatsoever. There's a perfect international airport nearby,
Frankfurt-Main (EDDF), which coexists with the gliders without any
problem. Now Ryanair appears and chooses not to use Frankfurt-Main, but
rather fly to Frankfurt-Hahn (EDFH) instead, because it's cheaper (in
fact, ist's even subsidized...). And then Ryanair asks that gliders
should go and spend thousands of Euros for transponders, so Ryanair can
spare a few bucks in landing fees by using a subsidized airport.

But every time a glider takes off in that area now is the glider pilot
making a decision to fly in an area of high density airline traffic? I
know this mess was not created by the glider pilots changing how they
operate--but what is reasonable to do now from a safety viewpoint? If
that traffic is there then transponders will likely provide a strong
safety-net, and lack of use might well end up costing a planeload of
passengers their lives and cost soaring greatly if there is a mid-air.
By all means go and tackle Ryanair on the safety implications of what
they are doing. They hardly have a good PR image and the public may
well be sympathetic.

---

Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.

Allegheny 853
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Fairield, Indiana 1969 -- 83 killed

Pacific Southwest 182
Boeing 727 vs. Cessna 172
San Diego, California 1978 -- 144 killed

Aeroméxico 498 (the mid-air that lead to Mode C transponder and TCAS
carriage requirements in the USA)
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Cerritos, California 1986 -- 82 killed, 8 injured

NetJets N879QS
Hawker 800XP vs. Schleicher ASG-29
Reno, Nevada 2006 -- 3 minor injuries (we were very lucky)

Darryl

Am 12.10.2010 16:25, Darryl Ramm wrote:

But every time a glider takes off in that area now is the glider pilot
making a decision to fly in an area of high density airline traffic? I
know this mess was not created by the glider pilots changing how they
operate--but what is reasonable to do now from a safety viewpoint? If
that traffic is there then transponders will likely provide a strong
safety-net, and lack of use might well end up costing a planeload of
passengers their lives and cost soaring greatly if there is a mid-air.
By all means go and tackle Ryanair on the safety implications of what
they are doing. They hardly have a good PR image and the public may
well be sympathetic.

---

Yes, this area has airline traffic, but not what you would call "high
density". ATC aouthorities are watching this closely, and they have the
exact traffic figures, and they also have clear rules when to implement
a Class C or Class D airspace to seperate IFR and VFR traffic. Up to
now, there was no need to do so, we will hear in a few weeks it this
will change next year. We talk to those ATC people, and they listen to
us. There are also glider pilots amongst them.

But definitely there is no cooperation to be expected from Ryan Air. A
company that wants you to pay for the use of the toilet in their planes,
and that recently started to apply for flying their planes with only one
pilot in order to save money will for sure not sponsor any security
equipment for glider pilots.



Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.


The situation in Germany is different than in the USA. There is in
general a far more strict seraration between IFR and VFR traffic. E.g.
for the traffic to and from Frankfurt International there will never be
(legally) a situation like the one described in the incident report, as
all IFR fraffic is routed through Class C airspace.

Requiring mandatory transponder use for gliders in Germany would be sure
overkill, and we are fighting against a rule like that.

--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE

On Oct 12, 6:25*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Oct 12, 2:08*am, John Smith wrote:





Darryl Ramm wrote:


---

Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.

Allegheny 853
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Fairield, Indiana 1969 -- 83 killed

Pacific Southwest 182
Boeing 727 vs. Cessna 172
San Diego, California 1978 -- 144 killed

Aeroméxico 498 (the mid-air that lead to Mode C transponder and TCAS
carriage requirements in the USA)
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Cerritos, California 1986 -- 82 killed, 8 injured

NetJets N879QS
Hawker 800XP vs. Schleicher ASG-29
Reno, Nevada 2006 -- 3 minor injuries (we were very lucky)

Darryl

Yes terrible accidents such as those cited motivated the regulators
and industry to require the carriage of transponders. The FAA Near
Midair Collision Avoidance database suggests that annual reports of
reported near midair collisions in the US have decreased in number
since the 1980s.

http://www.asias.faa.gov/portal/pls/...sion id=30289

Still, only 45 of 6624 records (0.6% of the total) in the NMAC
database contain the term "glider". Only nine records contain the
terms "glider" and "US air carrier".

The other 6579 reports (99.4%) do not involve gliders. Many of these
other reported near midair collisions presumably happened between
transponder-equipped powered aircraft.

In conclusion, experience shows that the possibility of a mid-air
collision between a glider and an air carrier is real enough (and
warrants prudent action) but let's put it into perspective. Gliders
form a very small part of the total collision risk that commercial
passengers are exposed to.

Ian Grant IN

On Oct 12, 12:00*pm, India November wrote:
On Oct 12, 6:25*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:



On Oct 12, 2:08*am, John Smith wrote:

Darryl Ramm wrote:

---

Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.

Allegheny 853
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Fairield, Indiana 1969 -- 83 killed

Pacific Southwest 182
Boeing 727 vs. Cessna 172
San Diego, California 1978 -- 144 killed

Aeroméxico 498 (the mid-air that lead to Mode C transponder and TCAS
carriage requirements in the USA)
MD DC-9 vs. Piper Cherokee
Cerritos, California 1986 -- 82 killed, 8 injured

NetJets N879QS
Hawker 800XP vs. Schleicher ASG-29
Reno, Nevada 2006 -- 3 minor injuries (we were very lucky)

Darryl

Yes terrible accidents such as those cited motivated the regulators
and industry to require the carriage of transponders. The FAA Near
Midair Collision Avoidance database suggests that annual reports of
reported near midair collisions in the US have decreased in number
since the 1980s.

http://www.asias.faa.gov/portal/pls/...pp_module.show...

Still, only 45 of 6624 records (0.6% of the total) in the NMAC
database contain the term "glider". Only nine records contain the
terms "glider" and "US air carrier".

The other 6579 reports (99.4%) do not involve gliders. Many of these
other reported near midair collisions presumably happened between
transponder-equipped powered aircraft.

In conclusion, experience shows that the possibility of a mid-air
collision between a glider and an air carrier is real enough (and
warrants prudent action) but let's put it into perspective. Gliders
form a very small part of the total collision risk that commercial
passengers are exposed to.

Ian Grant IN

Ian

I am not sure the NMAC statistics you quote are really too meaningful
either way. They may be self selecting as gliders may just not get
detected either by the flight crew (or passengers), TCAS or ground SSR
or primary radar. And there are a significant amount of "unknown"
aircraft being reported - including near some glider sites. Some
researchers claim that NMAC may only capture a few percent of the
actual incidents so I'm awfully nervous about using it for much. And
if many of those other incidents involved transponder equipped
aircraft then the TCAS II saftey net in an airliner would have applied
which may make an apparent low percentage of close encounters a much
higher mid-air collision risk. Again my concern is not universal,
there are sites in the USA where this risk is much higher than others--
and pilots in those locations need to focus on transponder adoption,
working with local ATC, etc. For some of those sites like Reno -- NMAC
does flag the issue pretty well, for others I suspect less so.

---

To get off seeming to bash this incident in Europe it really seems
that Peter Scholtz and others are working on this are trying to deal
with that situation well.

Thanks

Darryl

Where commercial air transport (CAT) and gliders are to be found in
the same airspace, I have long been of the opinion that "see and be
seen" is too imperfect to rely upon safely, and either procedure or
technology is needed to remove some of the element of luck in
minimising collision risks.

I think it is unrealistic to expect CAT to take up Flarm.

It is also unrealistic to expect all gliders in Europe to be able to
fit transponders. I can give detailed reasons why, if necessary, but
they have been repeated many times by many people. Those who don't
believe it are either completely ignorant of the circumstances in
Europe, or can speak authoritatively because they are part of EASA and/
or a national aviation authority. If the latter, why have you not made
clear to the UK CAA (Civil Aviation Authority), to the British Gliding
Association, and to the maintenance operations that I have used in the
UK, that the difficulties I'm told about which are insuperable in many
cases, are a fiction. If you are not in EASA, and not in a national
aviation authority, and believe these problems are easily and legally
overcome in Europe, you are simply wrong.

There are places where procedural separation can be use, by both
gliders and CAT being in touch with air traffic control.

Where none of the above apply, and/or for some reason the glider
pilots cannot or will not talk to air traffic control, there is one
other safeguard which could be adopted: PCAS or similar in the glider.

I have written a long report for the British Gliding Association where
this issue, amongst others, is discussed. My points included:

---------------

Where possible, I also believe that units such as PCAS (a transponder-
detection device) should be fitted, for reducing conflicts with
transponder-equipped powered aircraft not part of gliding operations,
particularly in areas where other General Aviation (GA) aircraft are
frequently encountered, and also when “see and avoid” could not be
effective such as cloud flying..

Although glider-unrelated power collision in cloud is unknown, it
seems to me a small price to pay to reduce that tiny risk. So I think
a personal policy of using PCAS for cloud climbing, and as far as
possible for other flying – particularly IMC (closer then 1000 feet
vertically etc.) and wherever gliders fly in areas or height bands
known to have a lot of transiting GA, plus launch points where
transits are a known issue, is worthwhile. It may also help the
glider pilot to detect the much larger number of threats which result
in airprox reports.

There is undoubtedly a disadvantage of using PCAS in a glider. It
gives far more alerts than real collision threats. Personally, I take
these as being a reminder as to how poor are even my best attempts at
Lookout. Some pilots might regard this as a distraction. I would
rather have many distractions and one real worthwhile alert, than miss
the one really important one. Pilots engaged in competition or other
high workload situations may take a different view.

Crude cost benefit analysis

For Individual gliders to fit PCAS, 100% fitment in 2300 UK gliders
would cost about £1,000,000. If history is anything to go by, that
would address 2 collisions causing 3 fatalities over a 40 year period.

--------------------

I have also studied UK airprox reports, and drew some conclusions from
those.

This is already a long post, and I do not propose to include any more
quotations from my report. If anybody wants a copy of the whole thing,
however, feel free to e-mail me, and I will send a copy by e-mail as a
Word document.

I would be interested to see if anybody else in other countries, USA
or Europe, have done similar analyses of collisions and Airproxes.

Chris N

On 10/12/2010 12:00 PM, India November wrote:
Yes terrible accidents such as those cited motivated the regulators
and industry to require the carriage of transponders. The FAA Near
Midair Collision Avoidance database suggests that annual reports of
reported near midair collisions in the US have decreased in number
since the 1980s.

http://www.asias.faa.gov/portal/pls/...sion id=30289

Still, only 45 of 6624 records (0.6% of the total) in the NMAC
database contain the term "glider". Only nine records contain the
terms "glider" and "US air carrier".

The other 6579 reports (99.4%) do not involve gliders. Many of these
other reported near midair collisions presumably happened between
transponder-equipped powered aircraft.

In conclusion, experience shows that the possibility of a mid-air
collision between a glider and an air carrier is real enough (and
warrants prudent action) but let's put it into perspective. Gliders
form a very small part of the total collision risk that commercial
passengers are exposed to.



Like Darryl, I am very skeptical of these statistics, based on my
personal experiences. In 2002, I flew several days at Minden, where I
had three "too close for comfort" airliner fly-bys, so the idea that
there were really only 9 events in all those years is just nuts in my
opinion. Minden alone must produce that many in a year, and it'd be even
more, except a lot of gliders there do carry and use transponders.


I vowed I'd never fly at Minden again without a transponder, and
installed one when I got home. Even when I was flying at home (a low
traffic area), over many years, I've had a few fighters, C-17s, and
airliners come close. Since I put the transponder in, no fast or heavy
traffic has come close at all at home, at Minden, or anywhere. I turn it
on and it works.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

On Oct 12, 4:14*pm, Peter Scholz
wrote:
Am 12.10.2010 16:25, Darryl Ramm wrote:

But every time a glider takes off in that area now is the glider pilot
making a decision to fly in an area of high density airline traffic? I
know this mess was not created by the glider pilots changing how they
operate--but what is reasonable to do now from a safety viewpoint? If
that traffic is there then transponders will likely provide a strong
safety-net, and lack of use might well end up costing a planeload of
passengers their lives and cost soaring greatly if there is a mid-air.
By all means go and tackle Ryanair on the safety implications of what
they are doing. They hardly have a good PR image and the public may
well be sympathetic.

---

Yes, this area has airline traffic, but not what you would call "high
density". ATC aouthorities are watching this closely, and they have the
exact traffic figures, and they also have clear rules when to implement
a Class C or Class D airspace to seperate IFR and VFR traffic. Up to
now, there was no need to do so, we will hear in a few weeks it this
will change next year. We talk to those ATC people, and they listen to
us. There are also glider pilots amongst them.

But definitely there is no cooperation to be expected from Ryan Air. A
company that wants you to pay for the use of the toilet in their planes,
and that recently started to apply for flying their planes with only one
pilot in order to save money will for sure not sponsor any security
equipment for glider pilots.



Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.

The situation in Germany is different than in the USA. There is in
general a far more strict seraration between IFR and VFR traffic. E.g.
for the traffic to and from Frankfurt International there will never be
(legally) a situation like the one described in the incident report, as
all IFR fraffic is routed through Class C airspace.

Requiring mandatory transponder use for gliders in Germany would be sure
overkill, and we are fighting against a rule like that.

--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE

Can I also point out that fitting Transponders to gliders without TCAS
does not give them any means of avoiding glider to glider type
collisions. It is onlyreally of benefit to ATC and airliners, but
glider owners are expected to pay for them!

Derek C

On Oct 14, 1:52*am, Derek C wrote:
On Oct 12, 4:14*pm, Peter Scholz
wrote:



Am 12.10.2010 16:25, Darryl Ramm wrote:

But every time a glider takes off in that area now is the glider pilot
making a decision to fly in an area of high density airline traffic? I
know this mess was not created by the glider pilots changing how they
operate--but what is reasonable to do now from a safety viewpoint? If
that traffic is there then transponders will likely provide a strong
safety-net, and lack of use might well end up costing a planeload of
passengers their lives and cost soaring greatly if there is a mid-air..
By all means go and tackle Ryanair on the safety implications of what
they are doing. They hardly have a good PR image and the public may
well be sympathetic.

---

Yes, this area has airline traffic, but not what you would call "high
density". ATC aouthorities are watching this closely, and they have the
exact traffic figures, and they also have clear rules when to implement
a Class C or Class D airspace to seperate IFR and VFR traffic. Up to
now, there was no need to do so, we will hear in a few weeks it this
will change next year. We talk to those ATC people, and they listen to
us. There are also glider pilots amongst them.

But definitely there is no cooperation to be expected from Ryan Air. A
company that wants you to pay for the use of the toilet in their planes,
and that recently started to apply for flying their planes with only one
pilot in order to save money will for sure not sponsor any security
equipment for glider pilots.

Moving topic somewhat but I want to make the point that we've lost
several airliners full of passengers in fatal-midair collisions with
light-aircraft and the response to that was largely transponders and
TCAS/ACAS. And gliders operating near high density airline and fast
jet traffic without transponders are effectively bypassing that
evolution. I worry that human nature and perception of risks can allow
apparent reduction of risks in situation because we don't perceive
those rare but critical accidents happening frequently enough to
register as practical risks even if they have catastrophic outcomes. I
start my talks on collision avoidance with the following (USA centric
information). There are similar fatal mid-air collisions outside the
USA.

The situation in Germany is different than in the USA. There is in
general a far more strict seraration between IFR and VFR traffic. E.g.
for the traffic to and from Frankfurt International there will never be
(legally) a situation like the one described in the incident report, as
all IFR fraffic is routed through Class C airspace.

Requiring mandatory transponder use for gliders in Germany would be sure
overkill, and we are fighting against a rule like that.

--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE

Can I also point out that fitting Transponders to gliders without TCAS
does not give them any means of avoiding glider to glider type
collisions. It is onlyreally of benefit to ATC and airliners, but
glider owners are expected to pay for them!

Derek C

TCAS in a glider? That's not ever going to happen. But quite a few of
the transponder equipped gliders in the USA (we have a high ratio of
those in Northern California/Nevada) also carry the Zaon MRX PCAS and
they are mostly helpful for glider-glider and glider-GA traffic
awareness--but a lot less useful than Flarm would be.

No single technology does now, and no upcoming technology will provide
very effective traffic awareness/collision avoidance needs across
glider-glider, glider-GA and glider-airliner/fast jet etc. If
airliners are a serious concern in an area then transponders in
gliders working with ATC radar and the TCAS in airliners is the
ultimate technical approach available to help avoid a collision. The
glider pilot installs a transponder to avoid the airliner running into
him, to avoid the deaths of an airliner full of passengers and to
avoid the damage to soaring that such an accident would cause. There
is absolutely no collision avoidance technology available that could
warn a glider pilot and give them more information/effective result
than allowing TCAS II in the airliner cockpit to do its thing.

Traffic awareness technology in the glider cockpit can help make
glider pilots aware of where airline etc. traffic is. PCAS can do that
a little (but is too slow/short range and non-directional to deal with
airliners and fast jets). ADS-B will help in future (but with lots of
caveats esp. around the dual-link technology in the USA). However none
of these future technologies will provide the ultimate saftey net that
transponders and TCAS do, not for decades.

The appropriate technology for glider-glider and glider-towplane
scenarios is Flarm and the glider-GA question is more complex
especially in the USA. PCAS has been the only answer we've had there
for a while. ADS-B may be the answer long-term (but it looks like it
is going to be a mess in the USA for quite a while).

Darryl