Description

On 8 November 2012, the crew of a Saab 340B being operated by Regional Express on a scheduled passenger flight from Sydney to Newcastle lost positional awareness in day Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) after requesting and being granted visual positioning to the landing runway at destination. ATC observed that the aircraft was descending away from the expected approach and alerted and then assisted the crew to position to the approach for which they had been cleared.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the ATSB. It was noted that Newcastle civil airport is actually a terminal on the Williamtown RAAF base and that ATS is provided by military personnel.

It was found that the First Officer, who had 224 hours on the aircraft type and 411 hours in total and had been issued with his CPL 10 months earlier, had been PF for the sector. The Captain was found to have obtained a majority of his 12386 hours on the aircraft type. Both had flown to Newcastle before, although the First Officer had only done so in daylight. Although daylight continued to prevail during the occurrence, it was quite near to nightfall and the conditions were characterised by the Investigation as 'low light'.

It was established that after reporting 'visual' to destination APP on approaching from the south, the aircraft had been cleared for a visual approach to right base on runway 12 and instructed to contact TWR when 10nm from the aerodrome. This was done and both TWR and APP controllers continued to monitor the progress of the flight on radar.