What caused a near miss between 2 jets near Tokyo – and what can China learn?

A near-miss on Tuesday involving an All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane coming dangerously close to another jet while approaching Tokyo’s Haneda Airport from Shanghai has thrown aviation safety back into focus – particularly, anti-collision technology and protocols – according to industry professionals based in China. While the intervention of one jet’s traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) prevented contact between the two planes, analysts said there were lessons China could learn from the incident, given the other jet’s system failed to provide a similar warning. They also added China has “stringent” measures and systems in place to make such occurrences “less likely”, since safety would make or break Beijing’s aviation ambitions as well as the future of its home-grown airliners. ANA Flight NH968, a Boeing 767 carrying 197 passengers and crew members, nearly collided with a Cessna 525C inspector jet from the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB). The widebody 767 almost struck the light twin-engined Cessna while descending into Tokyo early Tuesday morning, according to Chinese and Japanese media reports. Neither ANA nor JCAB immediately responded to requests for comment from the South China Morning Post. Flight trajectory data indicated that the vertical separation between the two aircraft was merely 20 metres (66 feet) when the jets crossed paths, triggering the ANA plane’s TCAS and prompting the pilot to avert impact with a course correction. No one was injured. The collision avoidance device did not work on the inspector jet, according to Japan’s All-Nippon News Network. Tokyo-based newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun quoted the country’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism – which counts JCAB among its divisions – as saying it was investigating the incident, including whether it will be classified as serious, the exact distance between the two aircraft and their altitudes. China takes safety extremely seriously, and we have not heard about any similar incident happening at Chinese airports in recent decades Brian Yang Bo, independent aviation adviser Independent aviation adviser Brian Yang Bo said the incident must be thoroughly investigated to ascertain its cause and whether negligence was at play, adding the near miss offered lessons for all operators, including those from China. “Chinese aviation regulators will certainly closely track Japan’s investigation and make updates to its safety procedures,” Yang said, adding that the risk of such a collision was lower at Chinese airports given safety records. “China takes safety extremely seriously, and we have not heard about any similar incident happening at Chinese airports in recent decades.” Tuesday’s incident was not Haneda’s first. In January 2024, a Japan Airlines Airbus A350-900 collided with a Japanese coastguard plane on the runway during a landing. “China’s [better] track record is due to rules promulgated by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), including those on collision prevention, that are known to be stricter and more regimented than some internationally adopted procedures,” Yang said. Like all modern jets, he said, Chinese-made passenger airliners – including the domestically designed narrowbody C909 and C919 jets – were equipped with state-of-the-art warning and collision-prevention avionics systems in compliance with rules from domestic and Western regulators. China’s safety certification of the two models, as well as the European Union’s ongoing assessment of the C919, would include checks and simulations of collision warning and response. TCAS serves as pilots’ last line of defence against mid-air crashes, using directional antennas and transponders to scan the surrounding airspace for a real-time map of nearby vessels. If two flight paths are converging, it calculates when and where the encounter will occur and issues warnings to the flight crew. The C919’s integrated surveillance system, provided by Collins Aerospace and the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China, consists of a TCAS, a ground proximity warning system and a transponder. According to the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, manufacturer of the C919 and C909, its system has reached the level of similar set-ups on the Boeing 787, Airbus A380 and A350 XWB families of widebody jet. The C919 made its commercial debut in May 2023. Jang Kwang-chol, a Korean instructor captain working in China for more than a decade, also said China’s safety sensitivity is higher in practice, which helped to minimise safety risks, including collisions. “Pilots operating in China treat an event like this with visibly more gravity than colleagues I’ve flown with elsewhere,” Jang said. “If the same near-miss had happened at a Chinese airport, the CAAC would investigate it with far more weight than most regulators would. That difference is real.” He added this difference also helped to drive home the need for caution among pilots. “The burden and oversight that China puts on individual pilots is genuinely heavier than in most countries,” Jang said. “The CAAC monitors these situations with a very high level of safety sensitivity, and most pilots carry that awareness into every flight, taking considerable care to prevent a situation like this.”

What caused a near miss between 2 jets near Tokyo – and what can China learn?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The incident, which at one point saw only 20 metres separating the planes, offers lessons for Chinese regulators and operators, analysts say

The incident, which at one point saw only 20 metres separating the planes, offers lessons for Chinese regulators and operators, analysts say