Why planes collide

At this point the plane was flying at an altitude of feet, 1, meters from the end of the runway. Both the EasyJet crew and the controller told the United Airlines crew to ascend once more, and the pilots aborted their landing.

By the time the planes crossed paths they were separated by just feet. The controller did not have a direct line of sight to the 09 runways because the equipment that faces in their direction appeared to be broken and she was working at a different screen, according to the report. At the time of the incident the screen facing towards the 09 runways had been fixed and the controller was preparing to switch, which she was "worried" about, according to the report.

She also told investigators she had been confused by a previous request from a different plane to land on runway 09R, which is longer than 09L, due to technical difficulties.

Three Russian bomber crew members died and another was injured when their plane crashed on a training flight Tuesday, Moscow's defense ministry said, days after a deadly collision between two jets. Three international flights, carrying hundreds of passengers, had a narrow escape from a mid-air collision in the Delhi flight information region on Sunday after multiple auto-generated warnings by the Air Traffic Control ATC , according to reports. Marines and Japanese authorities were searching early Thursday off the coast of Japan for missing Marines after a mishap between a fighter jet and plane used both for transporting troops and refueling, Marine officials said.

One US Marine died and five were missing Thursday after two American military aircraft crashed during a refuelling operation off the coast of Japan, officials said. The pilot of a small passenger plane died after colliding with another aircraft early Sunday and crashing into a field near the capital Ottawa, officials said. Two aircraft collided mid-air over Ottawa's west end on Sunday, which led to one of them crashing in a nearby field, the police said.

More News ». Who was responsible for Mumbai near miss? I was in 10F, the window seat of the emergency aisle, on the right side of the plane. I fly for business every other week and I try to get a seat with extra leg room. I'm not a nervous flyer; in fact, I was napping as we took off.

A few minutes after takeoff came a loud explosion like a car backfiring. The plane jolted and there was a smell of burning machinery. Everybody gasped and there were a few screams.

Looking out of the window, I could see us rollicking back and forth; we were so high up, the houses looked like toys and the cars like ants. But we weren't falling, so I thought, "OK, one of our engines has blown, but we have another engine, we're returning to La Guardia, the pilot has everything under control. It was eerily quiet - everyone was assessing the situation. It soon became obvious we weren't going to La Guardia, we were headed for the water, and I started thinking this could be it.

I thought about my wife, Tesa, and our two children, Adeline, nearly three, and Zy, who was 12 weeks, and I tried to make peace. Then I heard the announcement, "This is the captain, brace for impact", and everything suddenly got very clear.

I had to stop thinking about death and start thinking about what I was going to do once the pilot landed in the water. At about ft, I started reading the instructions. There were six steps, and I read them two or three times, testing myself on each step and trying to envision myself opening the door. We were headed for the water fast.

I cinched my seat belt tighter and tighter, and balled myself up over my overcoat. Then we hit the water. It felt like the worst car wreck you could imagine. We bounced and skidded to a halt. A lot of people had bloodied noses or eyes from hitting the seat in front of them, but my first thought was, "This plane is sinking, we have to get everybody off as soon as possible.

Someone next to me was trying to pull the door in and I said, "No, it's got to go out. I knew people would rush to the emergency exit, so if it had jammed there would have been a pile-up. I managed to get the door open and I grabbed the hand of a woman sitting next to me, Jenny. We walked out on to the wing, holding each other for support, the initial blast of cold air hitting us.

The waves were lapping over the wing and it was sinking lower. We pushed as far along as we could to make room for other people. I heard later that people at the back were shoving and pushing as the plane started to fill up with water, but on the wing everyone was helping each other.

It was freezing, and nobody had a jacket. Some people were submerged up to their waists. I was thinking, "OK, now we're going to drown. We're going to die of hypothermia. It felt like half an hour before we saw the first ferry, although it can have been only five or 10 minutes.

It was tantalisingly close. For a moment I thought about swimming for it, but I remembered hearing that hypothermia sets in in seconds, and within minutes your limbs no longer work.

If you submerge your head, your brain doesn't function properly. I was fourth on to the ferry, and I started helping people on to the boat. There was a woman clutching a baby for dear life, and a man who had been submerged completely and was incoherent, laying on the deck of the ferry, moaning. The ferry drivers gave out their jackets and the shirts on their backs for people who were freezing. I've had a lot of trauma since the crash. I've thought of alternative scenarios: the door not opening and being crushed.

The wing catching in the water and tipping us in a cartwheel over and over until the plane falls apart and I'm upside down, submerged in water. And I've also thought, why me? Why am I still here? But one thing I will take away from the experience is how everyone pulled together. It's comforting to know I was able to respond in a crisis. I got through it by taking it one step at a time; figuring out my next 10 seconds of action. Get the door open, throw the door out, figure out if you're sinking.

What is the immediate next thing I need to do? And the next? I just kept on doing that until I reached solid ground and got into the ferry terminal and talked to my wife. Only then did I go into the men's room and let myself cry for a few minutes. I'd changed on to flight at the last minute in the hope of getting home from a business trip for my son's ninth birthday.

I usually ask for a seat at the back, but 9A, a window seat by the left side emergency exit, had been one of the last available. If I'd taken my usual seat, I would be dead. I was sitting in front of a flight attendant and, just over an hour into our journey, I leaned over to her and said quietly, "The pilot is flying this plane in a very strange way. The attendant said, softly, "Hydraulics.

The flight attendants gave every appearance of business as usual. Then, 30 minutes after the explosion, they told us to adopt the brace position. They said we should be prepared for the worst. I still didn't think we were going to die.

I assumed they would be able to get the aeroplane down. It was quiet. I remember taking off my tie - I don't know why. I put my reading glasses in my shirt pocket, tied my shoelaces and waited. I later learned that we hit the ground at mph; the normal landing speed is around The right wing hit the ground first and started a fire. The plane slammed down, bounced up, came back down on to its nose and began to cartwheel.

The noise and impact were incredible. I couldn't hold the brace position and I bounced upright with my arms over my head. A fireball of burning fuel came through the seal of the door next to my left knee and hit me in the face. It melted the front of my Dacron shirt, burned my chest and the gap between the tops of my socks and my trousers.

The plane broke into five sections and each went in a different direction. We were thrown around viciously, and I was knocked unconscious.

When I came round, I was hanging upside down from my seat belt. I undid it and walked across the ceiling of the cabin to the exit. There were cables hanging down, so I held them up, letting the people behind me get out. I was just aware of the need to keep people moving so they weren't blocking each other. In a plane crash, people sit around waiting for direction, but being prepared can make all the difference.

Now when I fly, I wear natural fibres. Often I wear a sweatshirt with a hood. A man in the burns unit with me was a flight engineer, and he told me that when airline personnel are passengers, they're taught to cover their head with a blanket in an emergency landing. But there aren't enough blankets for every passenger.

Dressing in a way that covers up as much of your body as possible, counting the rows from your seat to the emergency exits, knowing how to open them and moving quickly can make all the difference. You are the person you have to look to to save your life. It was a chartered flight from Uganda and we were just coming into Congo.

I was seated over the wing, by the window. I was the only woman on board, with nine men. About 45 minutes into the flight, I could see from my seat that the plane was flying very low over the mountains. The pilot announced he was losing control and I put on my seat belt. Other people panicked. I was thinking about my family, and praying. My worry was that if I died, my daughter was only four, I was a single mum, and I didn't want her to lose me.

Within three minutes, the plane had crashed into trees, tearing off the wing next to me, and nose-dived into the mountain.