"Potential disaster" at Aust'n airport prompts calls for review of landing procedures

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Footage has emerged of two Qantas airplanes coming within seconds of a crash landing at Melbourne airport last year, prompting calls for a review of Australia's airline safety procedures.

The video, taken on July 5, 2015, shows two Qantas carriers simultaneously aborting landing attempts at Tullamarine, Melbourne's international airport.

According to media reports on Monday, the Qantas jets -- arriving from Sydney and Canberra at night time --were only given 20 seconds to pull out of their respective landings, due to an Emirates plane delaying its scheduled takeoff.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said the near miss was a "potential disaster," claiming the planes had broken air safety restrictions by coming within a one nautical mile of each other.

"This was a near miss," Xenophon said in comments published by Nine News on Monday.

"Two aircraft nearly collided in air, because of a series of systemic failures."

But both Qantas and Airservices Australia, the nation's corporate body responsible for airspace management, have denied the Xenophon's allegation that the planes broke safety regulations.

Tullamarine airport's landing grid, which involves intersecting runways operating concurrently, is being blamed for the mix up.

The "land and hold short operations" (LAHSO) configuration, also used by Australia airports in Adelaide and Darwin, is banned in some countries, with some international airspace controllers believing intersecting runways is unnecessarily hazardous.

The incident is currently under investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

Despite the investigation not being finalized, early reports allege that a young, inexperienced flight controller was managing the landing before his supervisor was forced to intervene telling the trainee that the "scenario involving the three aircraft was not going to work."

Xenophon was later contacted by the concerned air controllers and pilots about incident, which Airservices Australia official Greg Hood later admitted was a "serious incident" before a Senate hearing in August.

On Monday, Xenophon called for an immediate safety audit of Airservices Australia's LAHSO landing procedure.

"When it comes to safety, there must be no scrimping of staff, and we should be adopting world's best practice (of using more expensive parallel runways)," Xenophon said in comments published by Fairfax Media on Monday. Endit

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