A Tunisian airline, which was involved in a near-catastrophic incident at Nice Airport in the South of France when one of its planes nearly landed on top of a packed EasyJet aircraft on Sunday night, has pinned the blame on bad weather and low visibility.
In its first public statement following the terrifying near-miss, Nouvelair said the incident occurred in “particularly difficult weather conditions, marked by heavy rain and extremely reduced visibility.”
French accident investigators allowed Nouvelair to take back control of the aircraft involved in the incident late on Monday afternoon after retrieving data from the so-called Black Boxes, including the cockpit voice data recorder.
The near miss occurred after Nouvelair flight BJ-586 lined up to land on the wrong runway and nearly collided with an EasyJet Airbus A320 that was waiting on the same runway to take off.
The pilots of the Nouvelair Airbus A320 only realized their mistake after they had crossed the runway threshold, performing a go-around with just seconds to spare to avoid disaster.
French media report that the Nouvelair plane came within 10 feet of landing on top of the EasyJet plane and that the two aircraft were so close that the passengers onboard the EasyJet were deafened by the roar of the Nouvelair jet’s engines as the go-around was initiated.
Nice Airport has two parallel runways that are known as 04L and 04R. Aircraft are normally cleared to land on 04L, while flights departing Nice are cleared to take off from 04R.
At around 11 pm on Sunday night, EasyJet flight U2-4706 to Nantes had been cleared to enter Runway 04R at around the same time that Nouveair flight 586 was on its final approach to land.
Air traffic control had given the pilots of the Nouvelair flight permission to land on Runway 04L, but, for reasons yet to be determined, the pilots accidentally lined up to land on Runway 04R.
It’s true that there was bad weather across the Côte d’Azur on Sunday evening. In fact, the EasyJet flight involved in this incident had been delayed by more than two hours and was nearly canceled due to the poor weather conditions.
It seems as if Nouvelair believes the weather certainly played a major part in this incident.
The airline added in a statement: “With over 36 years of experience in air transportation, Nouvelair reaffirms that the safety and security of its passengers and crews remain its top priority.”
“All operations of the company are conducted in strict compliance with international standards. Nouvelair is cooperating fully with the authorities in the ongoing investigation and will provide all the necessary support to ensure it goes smoothly.”
