Military plane and glider narrowly avoid crash while flying over eastern side of Bury St Edmunds

A military plane and a glider narrowly avoided crashing into each other during an ‘extremely close encounter’, a report has revealed.

The near-miss on the eastern side of Bury St Edmunds was on July 17, when the pilot of a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III was getting ready to land at RAF Mildenhall.

The pilot spotted the ASH 31 glider at a similar altitude before disconnecting the autopilot and taking a sharp left turn to avoid a mid-air crash at 3.30pm.

Following a meeting last month, UK Airprox Board have published a report which said there was a risk of a ‘serious collision’ as the aircrafts came within 500 feet (150 metres) of each other, putting the incident into a Category A - the highest level of risk.

An investigation found the glider pilot had turned off the transponder to preserve battery after being in the air for a little over six hours.

This reduced the likelihood of being identified by both the C-17 pilot and a Lakenheath controller, and combined with the glider’s ‘incompatible’ electronic equipment, it also meant the ASH 31 pilot could not detect the C-17 ahead of time.

The report recognised the pilot of ASH 31 had done everything possible to avoid the collision.

Although both aircrafts were flying in an uncontrolled airspace, the incident was close to the boundary of RAF Lakenheath/Mildenhall - a highly dense military airspace.

Therefore, the inability to communicate with air traffic control made the event more likely.

The report stressed the need for all aircrafts operating in such a busy airspace to utilise its equipment capable of receiving and transmitting information.

It concluded that both pilots shared ‘equal responsibility’ for collision avoidance and not to operate in such proximity to other aircraft as to create a collision hazard.