On Wednesday, October 12th, an easyJet Airbus A320 was forced to perform a rejected take-off at
Berlin's Brandenburg airport after an Air France Airbus A320 descended towards the same runway.
The Air France jet had to perform a go around due to the presence of the easyJet A320.
Let's look at all the details available regarding this worrying incident.
Taking place on October 12th, an Airbus A320-200 operated by
easyjet Europe registered OE-IZT was performing flight U2-5185 from
Berlin to Milan Linate. While the aircraft's scheduled departure time is 14:20 local time,
data from FlightRadar24.com indicates that the actual departure was 14:48.
OE-IZT pushed back and taxied to runway zero-seven-right and positioned itself at
the hold short line at runway 07R. The Aviation Herald notes that while the aircraft was holding
in position just off of the runway, another easyJet aircraft landed, which then proceeded
to clear the runway. At this point, IZT lined up on runway 07R and began to accelerate its engines.
Just as the easyJet flight was beginning its take-off roll and accelerating its engines,
an Air France Airbus A320-200 registered F-GKXH was on final
approach to runway 07R about 0.7NM (1.3 kilometers) before the runway
threshold. Performing flight AF1234 from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Berlin,
the aircraft had already descended through about 300 feet above ground level.
Due to the two aircraft seemingly being assigned the same runway, at approximately the same time,
the Air France aircraft had to perform a go around. Meanwhile, the easyJet flight
rejected their takeoff and spooled their engines down, taxiing slowly to the first possible exit.
Speaking with The Aviation Herald, a passenger who was onboard IZT reported the captain told
passengers that there had been a mistake made by ATC. The passenger recalls being told that
the easyJet flight was allowed to enter the runway while there was incoming traffic.
The captain then reportedly apologized,
telling passengers that the aircraft would circle around and perform the take-off again.
On October 14th, Germany's ATC service provider, DFS, told The Aviation Herald
that easyJet U2-5185 had been cleared to line up runway 07R and was, in fact, cleared for takeoff.
However, this flight took too long to commence its takeoff roll. As a result,
the tower was forced to cancel takeoff clearance for the easyJet flight and,
at the same time, had to instruct the Air France service to go around.
There are two parallel runways at Berlin Brandenburg, and as you can see from this
incident, runway 07R was used for both arrivals and departures. Thus,
some have questioned why the airport wasn't using one runway exclusively for departures and
the other for arrivals, as handling traffic becomes much easier with this separation.
The reason for this, as reported by a commenter on The Aviation Herald story,
is that the airport's two runways are handled independently as parallel operations.
Indeed, flights parked on the southern side of the terminal tend to use the southern runway
(zero-seven-right-slash-two-five-left) for both arrivals and departures, while aircraft on the
northern side tend to use the north runway (zero-seven-left-slash-two-five-right).
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