Loss of separation between aircraft occurs whenever
specified separation minima are breached. Loss of
separation may ultimately result in a mid-air
collision.
Source: www.skybrary.aero
Flight Z
The dead captain peers through cockpit windows flecked with blood and the fear-spittle of screams. Vomit, like panic paint. The wipers work at this grue, smearing, turning the control tower into a Grimm’s windmill with ghost sails. This monster should not be able to fly.
– Roan ground from Flight Z on stand Lima Three-Zero requesting start-up clearance.
– Flight Z is cleared to Tamara Airport. Your initial routeing is Dunwich One-Niner. Cleared to line-up and hold on runway One-Niner Left.
Engulfed by black carbon, two giant passenger jets have become fused together in an unimaginably violent collision. The shark’s head of a Jumbo jet hit by a Boeing 777 seems to erupt from the mangled wreckage like something struggling for air. One massive wing hangs from this convolvulus of aluminium, dragging and sparking on the apron as the molten shreds of the landing gear roll towards the taxiway. Its blistered engines – nacelles flayed open to reveal the weird anatomy of these powerhouses – stutter with flame, drizzling aviation fuel across the tarmac. Humours haze the black hulk, making its shape uncertain. Fractures in the fuselages are bonded shut by human glue.
The aircraft is the pilot; the pilot is the aircraft. The captain feels the jet a part of himself, as all pilots do. Must. He might look down and see his body blend sinuously with the seat, a molecular marriage of biology and mechanics. The blasted airstrip: pockmarked and strewn with skulls and naked, wrenched corpses bearing astonished expressions. He aligns the jet with the runway, and the engines clear their throats. He plays the throttles against the brakes and feels the tonnage pulling against them. The aircraft wants to be back up there, screaming in the night.
– Flight Z, this is Roan ground, you are cleared for take-off. Wind two five zero at fifteen.
Setting power. Brakes off.
Gathering pace, Flight Z grinds over the runway. Skulls and ribcages pulverise beneath the massive wheels; clouds of bone dust rise in their wake.
Eighty knots… one hundred fifty one knots…
Vee-One…
…one hundred fifty eight knots
…Rotate…
Engines screaming, the nose lifts and Flight Z arches into the night, wings flung out like something in the act of capitulation.
…Vee-Two… Positive rate of climb…
…Gear up…
The bay doors wail open, fighting against the buckle of that previous impact. The howl of wind as drag is increased. Body parts fall away like tidbits picked from a tooth. The bogies retract. At 300 feet the crosswind slams into the fuselage and the aircraft turns into it, crabbing against the airstream, inviting turbulence.
The 777 hangs from the body of the Jumbo like a forgotten stillbirth. This abomination shrinks into the violet night, guided by a heartbeat beacon, otherwise flying blind. No porthole lights. No pre-flight safety announcement. No in-flight entertainment. A troubled, monotonous banshee call rises into the troposphere. And then, after a short while, even that is gone.
