B3/1999L Aircraft Incident at Vaasa Airport, Finland, on 16 August 1999

On Monday 16 August, 1999 at 15.14 local time (Finnish time is used in this report) an incident took place at Vaasa airport on final runway 34 where a Vinka VN-21 light military trainer aircraft, owned and operated by Finnish Air Force (Ilmavoimat) made an avoiding manoeuvre because of close passage of a Fokker 50, SE-LIN, airliner, owned by Aircraft Finance and Trading BW and operated by the Swedish airline Skyways AB. The call sign of Vinka was M 42 (Matti 42) and the flight number of Fokker 50 was SKX 1593. There were 29 passengers and four crewmembers on board the airliner. The pilot was alone in Vinka. Nobody was injured.

AIB Finland received the incident report made by the pilot of the military trainer on the following day 17 August, 1999. The air traffic controller who worked in Vaasa air traffic control unit at the time of occurence filed his incident report on 17 August. The airline captain did not make any re-port as he was not aware of the incident.

On 20 August, 1999 the Accident Investigation Board (AIB), Finland appointed an investigation commission by letter B 3/1999 L. Airline pilot (ret.) Mr Jussi Haila was appointed investigator-in –charge and Air traffic controller (ret.) Mr Erkki Kantola was appointed member of the commission. The commission consulted psychologist, DPhil Leena Norros as an expert on the human factors contribution to the incident. The investigation was conducted in accordance with Finnish legisla-tion (Act 373/1985 and the Decree 79/1996), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) An-nex 13 and Council of European Union Directive 1994/56/EC.

The commission visited Vaasa airport, 1999 and the Military Aviation Academy on 30 August, 1999. The commission interviewed the Manager of Vaasa airport and familiarized itself with working conditions in Vaasa air traffic control tower (TWR). The controller who worked in Vaasa TWR at the time of the incident and the military trainer pilot also gave their statements in this connection. The airline captain gave his statement by telephone on 6 September, 1999.

Flight recorder data was not available for the investigation. The commission received the relevant radio communications and telephone recordings from Vaasa air traffic control on 20 August. The commission also requested the relevant radar data from Area Control Centre for Southern Fin-land on 24 August and received the data on 8 September, 1999.

Statens haverikommission (SHK), Accident Investigation Board, Sweden, was notified of this inci-dent and the investigation on 18 August, 1999. On the same day, SHK appointed Mr Rune Lundin as an accredited representative for the investigation. SHK also appointed Skyways AB captain Tore Svensson as an advisor to the accredited representative.

The commission sent the final draft of this aircraft incident report to the Finnish Flight safety Authority for comments according to ICAO Annex 13 on December 3, 1999. The draft has also been sent for comments to the Finnish Air Force and ANS Department of the Civil Aviation Ad-ministration, Finland.

On January 24,2000 the investigator-in-charge discussed the issues brought up in paragraph 1.18 of this report with the Data Protection Ombudsman. The final text in paragraph 1.18 has been reviewed by the Ombudsman and the Legislative Counsellor in charge of legislation for per-sonal data protection at the Finnish Ministry of Justice before the report was published.

The text in paragraph 1.18 of the final report and the additional safety recommendation were also sent for comments to the Flight Safety Authority on February 10, 2000.

The comments received have been enclosed as appendices 2-5.

The investigation was closed on March 13, 2000.

B3/1999L Report (pdf, 0.48 Mt)