The Belgian Ryanair pilot who landed gliding after a collision with birds: “For the same price, we would all die”

Crash in South Korea: “In a European airport, passengers would undoubtedly have had a better chance of surviving”

The “On” are the 172 occupants of Ryanair flight 4102 connecting Frankfurt-Hann airport to Rome Ciampino airport on November 10, 2008. This event, which caused only a few minor injuries, remains to date the only one classified as an “accident” on a Ryanair plane. It will also mark a change in the procedures to follow in the event of a bird collision. “Losing both engines simultaneously was statistically almost impossible, relates the pilot, now 60 years old. This was not even considered at the time by the engineers. There was nothing written in the textbooks about it so we had to improvise.”

Let’s dive back into history… So it’s November 10, 2018, a little before 8 a.m., near Rome. The sky is blue and the conditions are optimal. Frédéric Colson and his co-pilot, the young Dutchman Alexander Vet, are on their first flight of the day. They left Germany an hour and a half earlier and the flight seemed to be another routine trip for the captain who had been a pilot for more than 10 years, including two with Ryanair. TNT Airways, City Bird or Virgin Express: the resident of Saint-Hubert has already worked in the sector. In the distance, the two men see a black cloud. “We were in the middle of a starling migration phenomenon with tens of thousands of birds moving together in the sky.remembers the original Carolo. This phenomenon is very pretty to observe and very well known in Rome.

Brussels Airlines plane forced to land due to bird

But if the spectacle is magical, this impressive quantity of birds also represents a danger for aircraft engines. By rushing inside, the volatiles can damage the reactors, or even destroy them. Each airport has numerous devices to keep them away from the runways and warn planes of their presence. “But in Rome, the control tower didn’t report anything to us. The airport was also blamed in the investigation because it did not really have a program dealing with bird risk.”

The Boeing 737-800, a brand new aircraft that Ryanair had acquired six months earlier, is now in the final approach phase. Alexander Vet is in charge. The pilots see the cloud of starlings take off and move away. “But suddenly, the birds found themselves right in our path. When we saw them, we decided to avoid them. Unfortunately, without success.” The captain then asks his co-pilot to do a “go around”, i.e. a maneuver aimed at leaving again rather than landing. The crew immediately heard a loud “bang”.

Dozens, even hundreds (“some say 200, others 2,000″) starlings rush into the two engines. “It all happened in a matter of seconds. The Ciampino runway is short, we were quite heavy and with a tailwind, I made the decision to go around again, as recommended by the procedure at the time.”

The plane no longer responds

But the plane no longer responds. “Both engines jammed suddenly. Which made the situation very delicate. A Boeing 737, just like any twin-engine plane, is capable of flying without problem with one engine, but without both it is an absolute emergency situation.” The plane is then at very low altitude and the former City Bird pilot takes the controls. He has no choice but to land the aircraft as quickly as possible, using what energy he has left to make it hover. “Fortunately, unlike the recent tragedy in Korea, our landing gear remained extended. I had some experience in a 737 and I am also a glider and aerobatic pilot, which undoubtedly helped me manage the situation.”.

The impact on the ground, judged “violent” in the investigation report, led to a short runway excursion, quickly rectified by Frédéric Colson who managed to get his plane back on the axis of the runway. “The plane was beyond repair because it landed acrobatically on its tail and the fuselage was bent. The left landing gear also passed through the wing. We completed the landing with the left engine on the ground and the plane came to a stop 10 meters from the end of the runway.” The pilot, who alongside his pilot career subsequently worked as an aerial expert for the offices of Ministers Bellot and Galant, then became aware of the scale of the event. “Ciampino is a landlocked airport in the city. There is no clearance around the track. If you don’t land on it, it’s carnage. For the same price, we could all have died and killed many local residents.”

In shock, Frédéric Colson quickly comes out of his cockpit to help manage the passengers. The firefighters were already there, but miraculously, no fire came from the plane. “We didn’t have to evacuate the plane via the slides. The passengers were paralyzed and did not understand what had happened. In the end, only two crew members and three passengers were slightly injured and taken to hospital. Someone who works today for a Gulf company then sends three calls from his phone.

The first will be for Ryanair management to trigger the emergency plan, the second to reassure his wife and children and the third for… his first 737 instructor.to thank him for teaching him to fly this plane “. I was lucky to have excellent trainers in Belgium. At the time, Belgian pilots had a reputation for being good pilots and we flew a lot manually. Having little recourse to the autopilot was a real culture at Sabena, Sobelair or Virgin Express, unlike other countries where aeronautical traditions are different.

And the instructor reminded “that a pilot is not only paid for what he does routinely every day, but above all for what he must decide in difficult or emergency situations. The profession of pilot is a demanding and atypical profession but one where salaries and working conditions in Europe have unfortunately deteriorated significantly in recent years. In addition, pilots today are increasingly flying in automatic mode. But if you no longer fly manually, you lose your skills which are still necessary in an emergency.” And the sixty-year-old also realizes that “Very few airline pilots continue to fly small planes today. It’s a shame because it allows them to maintain very useful reflexes in certain emergency cases where bad decisions can lead to dramatic consequences…”

After the Ciampino accident, Frédéric Colson returned to flying quite quickly. “The first nights were not easy, but the support of my family helped me a lot and Ryanair had planned psychological follow-up. An English company called us every day to see how we were doing. But as we had nothing to reproach ourselves for, the return to normal life was not too complicated.”.

“I then stayed another ten years with Ryanair, which thanked the entire crew for the work accomplished. For them, we really “saved the furniture” because at the time Ryanair was not yet the immense organization that it is today If it had had a major accident at that time in its history, the economic consequences could have been fatal for the company..

The crew of Flight 4102 will also receive an award at a public ceremony and will be applauded in Italy. “You have to stay humble. The whole crew was incredible, but if we came out unscathed, it was 95% luck and 5% our skills and experience.”. The spectacular Ciampino accident will have few echoes in Belgium and the rest of the world. Which was not the case for the “miracle on the Hudson” which occurred two months later, the emergency landing of an airliner on the New York river made famous by the Clint Eastwood film.

Here too, the two engines of the US Airways Airbus A320 died following the ingestion of birds in the turbojets. “I’m still waiting for Hollywood to contact me even if the film would be very short: everything happened for us in a handful of secondsjokes the Belgian captain. The cinema doesn’t matter. My greatest satisfaction is having saved the lives of 172 people and subsequently having received recognition from the aeronautical community. I received hundreds of congratulatory messages from other pilots“.

The “miracle on the Hudson” and a British plane that ends up in the grass

These years 2008-2009 were decidedly special for aviation. While the simultaneous loss of two engines is extremely rare, a British Airways Boeing 777 also landed in the grass in early 2008 in London, following a freezing problem that froze the fuel filters of its two engines. “I had contact with the English commander and I would have appreciated having contact with Sully (Editor’s note: from the “Miracle on the Hudson”) but unfortunately this never happened.”

“Despite the rare accidents that are always highly publicized, aviation remains the safest means of transport, just behind… the elevator. recalls Frédéric Colson. “Each major incident is the subject of a very thorough investigation, which often results in new procedures to improve safety. I think it will be the same for the Jeju Air crash. However, it is too early to know exactly what happened. But a crucial question is already on the minds of all experts: why was the landing gear not lowered when the plane returned to land? Even though I fly a Boeing 777 today, I still know the Boeing 737-800 well, on which I have more than 14,000 flight hours. I can therefore guarantee that there is almost no technical configuration that prevents you from getting off the ground.”

Sixteen years have passed since this event and Frédéric Colson has kept a material memory of this episode: part of the fuselage of the Boeing is in his cellar in Saint-Hubert. “Following the accident, the Ryanair plane was decommissioned. (Editor’s note: he is the only one in the Irish company to have suffered such a fate to date). But by chance, I found the scrapyard in England where the plane was dismantled. I explained my story and the employees were enthusiastic: they said with humor that I could even take a whole part of the fender if I wanted but I had to explain to them that it did not fit in the trunk of my car . So I simply took a piece of the fuselage which I transformed into a decorative object.”