After an emergency landing of a plane in a field, the dispatcher may be punished

“A person will be fired if he mixed up the number in the call sign of the aircraft or swapped words”

Due to the emergency landing of the Sochi-Omsk plane in a field, a criminal case was opened under the article “Violation of traffic safety rules and operation of an aircraft.”

Time will tell who will be found guilty.

We talked to an experienced air traffic controller about whether the person who controlled the situation from the ground could be punished.

Our interlocutor Igor worked in aviation for 43 years, most of it as an air traffic controller.

– Now all decisions are left to the crew. We only need information from the dispatcher,” says Igor. – Conventionally, the crew says: I want to go to Novosibirsk, my hydraulics have leaked, in Omsk the GDP is 2500 meters, in Tolmachevo – 3500 meters. The dispatcher replies: I understand, I have permission, the weather is such and such, an ambulance will be ready, your priority is No. 1, turn on the distress signal. Crew: please fly level 100 – this is the height. Dispatcher: I authorize and so on. He guides the crew until they land on the field.

– So there shouldn’t be any questions for the air traffic controller?

– Don’t tell me. After an emergency landing, those who directly communicated may be suspended. In any case, on the day of the accident, after the shift, the dispatchers were probably forced to undergo a medical examination and the negotiation files were sealed. State ATM corporations (organizations providing air navigation services in Russia) will conduct their own investigation. They can check how correctly the dispatcher used English if the communication was not in Russian. By the way, the commander chooses the language of communication. If in the words of the dispatcher they find at least one mistake in a word or, God forbid, he mixed up at least one digit, for example, in the call sign of the aircraft, the direction or strength of the wind over Ubinsk, the amount of fuel on board – this is given as a percentage if he made a mistake in the English preposition , then that’s it, consider the dispatcher to have worked. If you have a pension, if not, you are free. The dispatcher must speak correctly. If he rearranges the words “reason” and “malfunction”, this is a gross mistake. Pilots know the standard 100-150 phrases by heart, and if the controller rearranges them, then under stress the pilots may become stupefied and not understand the meaning. Moreover, later this emergency landing, regardless of the results of the investigations, will be studied by dispatchers for years. For example, in 2010, when renewing my license in Samara, I was asked to tell the circumstances and reasons for the crash of a bomber near Saratov, which occurred on January 4, 1943. I told you. My dispatcher license was extended for a year.

– In what cases should pilots listen to the dispatcher?

– In Soviet times, when the dispatcher gave the command – I prohibit landing, the runway is occupied, then the plane went around. And he was obliged to leave, even if the dispatcher gave a stupid or incorrect command. In the USSR, if civilian or military pilots did not listen to the dispatcher’s commands, they were fired. Since the 90s, aviation in the Russian Federation has switched to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards and the work of the dispatcher has become consulting and informational. The commander makes all decisions.

– What is the dispatcher responsible for?

– The dispatcher bears criminal liability for the speed, degree of importance, sequence and objectivity of information. But he does not give commands, he only recommends. When landing in a field, the Novosibirsk dispatcher had to find out the terrain – the surface, the approximate coefficient of adhesion and the presence of obstacles, maybe there was a pole sticking out of the ground in the field, a stack of logs or a hole.