USAF plane and glider near-miss due to 'providence'

The near-miss involved a USAFE Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker like this one and a JP1 glider

A large military refuelling plane and a glider came very close to colliding and investigators said a higher power must have intervened.

The USAFE Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker had been performing training circuits when it started its descent into RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk at about 13:39 BST on 8 April.

The aircraft came into close proximity about halfway between Chatteris and Ely in Cambridgeshire, with the JSI glider about 15m (49ft) directly above the Boeing, with the space between the two "reduced to a bare minimum".

The UK Airprox Board said "providence had played a major part" in the outcome, and rated the risk of collision as Category A — the highest possible.

The military refuelling plane had been looking to land at US air base at RAF Mildenhall when the close-call occurred

The Stratotanker weighs about 44 tonnes when empty compared to the 0.7-tonne glider - a discrepancy which seriously concerned the Airprox Board.

According to the Airprox Board's report, the glider pilot had been on a cross-country flight, but had not informed air traffic control (ATC) of their presence.

The glider pilot said they did not feel the need to do so because they claimed they did not fly into RAF Mildenhall or nearby RAF Lakenheath's airspace zones, although they did fly near them.

They had also turned their transponder off to conserve battery, which "denied an important safety barrier to mid-air collision", the report said.

The panel ruled, therefore, that the glider pilot had no situational awareness of the whereabouts of the larger plane nor its proximity beneath them.

'Providence played major part'

The pilot of the military aircraft, meanwhile, which manoeuvred "aggressively" upon seeing the glider, had not told ATC their vision was impaired by the weather.

They also refrained from asking for additional help in navigating the plane away from the potential conflict upon receiving radar information about it.

The pilot was, therefore, deemed to have only had generic situational awareness of the presence of converging aircraft at the time of the near-miss.

Both pilots were told they shared an equal responsibility for collision avoidance.

"Members noted that the JS1 pilot had not seen the KC135 and the KC135 pilot had not seen the JS1 in time to have materially improved matters," the report said.

"The board agreed that providence had played a major part in the KC135 and JS1 having avoided each other and that there had been a serious risk of collision."