A passenger plane carrying more than 170 people came within 300 feet of a helicopter at Stansted during an incorrect handover of the controls. The Ryanair plane, with 172 passengers and six crew, was making an approach on a scheduled flight from Szczecin Airport, Poland, on March 8, 2024, when the incident happened.
On an initial attempt to land, the co-pilot disconnected the autopilot on approach. However, the aircraft became unstable, and a decision was made to go around for a second attempt at landing. The commander said he would take over, but the co-pilot did not state that the autopilot and autothrottle were not engaged.
Soon after that, while the aircraft was still in a left turn, during the go-around, the commander noticed that they had descended about 550 feet. He promptly took control and climbed the aircraft back to 3,000 feet, but in the meantime, the aircraft had descended 600 feet in total during the descent. That had brought the plane to within 300 feet of a helicopter that had been permitted to land.
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The report added: "After a manually flown go-around and missed approach procedure, the co-pilot handed control to the commander to allow the co-pilot to set up the Flight Management Computer for the next approach. However, the commander did not realise that the autopilot and autothrust were not engaged. The aircraft subsequently started a descent which was not noticed by either member of the crew.
"The aircraft descended about 550 ft before this was noticed and action taken to correct it. As this was more than 200 ft from the aircraft’s cleared altitude, this was classified as a level bust. This was a result of an incorrect procedure being used during the handover of control and the commander monitoring the co-pilot’s actions, rather than the aircraft.
The report added: "This incident also shows that distractions and quick decisions can lead to a loss of control of an aircraft, even for a small period of time. In this case, 600 ft of height was lost, and it came within 300 ft and 1.7 nm of helicopter traffic that was routing to Stansted, with both aircraft maintaining the correct safety margins."
The short-duration level bust was not noticed by the air traffic control officer at the time as they had their attention focused on co-ordinating the next departure with a colleague.”
The circumstances surrounding the occurrence did not fall within the definitions of an accident or serious incident but the investigation was treated as an incident to highlight the safety benefits from the safety actions taken by the operator by amending its handover procedure in its operating manual.
