A near miss between two RAF jets as they flew over Anglesey has sparked concerns about the strain being placed on air traffic controllers.

The pilot of a Hawk jet was carrying out practice forced landings at RAF Mona on May 14 this year when they approached slightly higher than required, so broke off the approach in order to reposition their aircraft.

While flying through cloud during the manoeuvre, the aircraft's on-board traffic collision avoidance system alerted them to a nearby aircraft, leading to the captain to "instinctively" adjust the plane's altitude.

After taking the action, they discovered that the nearby aircraft was a Texan jet carrying out a flight from RAF Valley.

According to a report released by the UK Airprox board, which investigates near misses between aircraft, the Texan crew also had an alert on their on-board system.

However the pilots, who were also flying through cloud, decided that because they had not been made aware of any other traffic, they "presumed the contact was either further away or spurious".

At their closest point, the aircraft were 1.7 nautical miles and 200ft vertically away from one another.

The report found that during the incident, the air traffic controller at RAF Valley was having to take on a number of tasks due to coronavirus restrictions, had just taken over and was catching up with additional admin.

They also said that the Texan had disappeared from the radar for a short period.

The report said: "The additional demands and stressors of operating in air traffic control during Covid-19 social distancing restrictions coupled with poor, out of date equipment cannot be overlooked.

"An extensive programme to update air traffic control equipment (Project Marshall) is several years behind schedule.

"In this occurrence, air traffic control had to work with both primary and secondary radar ‘blind spots’, air traffic control landlines where speech was broken/inaudible and an electronic tote system being U/S [unserviceable].

"Along with the increase in flying rates, the demands on the controllers remain high during Covid-19.

"Crews should be alive to this and trust the information presented to them on their collision warning systems along with a robust lookout scan to avoid a loss of safe separation."

The board said they were "concerned" about the situation the controller was placed in.

They said: "Whilst the restrictions on controllers due to Covid-19 was necessary, still members opined that the flying task should also have been reduced accordingly.

"To make matters worse, various equipment issues within the tower increased the controller’s workload still further, including a poor landline between Valley and Mona and the lack of the electronic tote.

"At the point of the [near miss], the Texan was routing through an area of known poor radar performance and the secondary surveillance radar overhead, military advisors informed the board that it was written into Valley orders that the area exists and so the controller was not required to remind the pilot about the possible reduced service, which was unfortunate, because a reminder may have alerted the pilot to the need to focus their look-out.

"As a consequence of the secondary surveillance radar overhead, the controller could not see that the Hawk Mode C was indicating that it was climbing out of Mona and so did not provide traffic information."

They added: "Finally, in considering the risk, members agreed that the 1,400ft vertical separation at closest point of approach would usually lead them to attribute a Risk Category C, no risk of collision.

"But they thought that this would not fully address the potential for a more serious event, given the closing speed of the two aircraft, or acknowledge that the avoiding action taken by the Hawk pilot was instrumental in achieving that separation."

A separate investigation carried out after the incident has also put forward a number of proposed changes to operations, such as redesigning part of the flight path, which "should prevent this incident occurring again".

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