Qantas Aircraft Involved in Fourth Close Call at Sydney Airport in a Month

A fourth close call incident has occurred at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport in less than a month, prompting an investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

The latest incident involved two Qantas planes being directed to the same intersection on the ground after air traffic controllers cleared them. A Qantas Airbus A321 was taxiing towards the runway for a flight bound for Gold Coast Airport when a Boeing 737-800, which had just arrived from Melbourne Airport, was also directed towards the same intersection.

The ATSB has confirmed that there was no immediate risk of collision, but it is still investigating to understand what other contributing factors were similar to the previous three incidents. The investigation will include interviews with air traffic controllers and flight crew involved, as well as retrieved recorded data.

This comes at a time when more than 50 controllers at Australia's busiest airport have expressed concern about the lack of time to learn a new, highly detailed, and complex material from airspace changes that came into effect in July. The changes were introduced due to the integration of Sydney's new second airport, Western Sydney Airport.