Airprox Serious incident Boeing 777-246 JA707J, Tuesday 23 April 2019
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Date:Tuesday 23 April 2019
Time:07:48
Type:Silhouette image of generic B772 model; specific model in this crash may look slightly different    
Boeing 777-246
Owner/operator:Japan Airlines (JAL)
Registration: JA707J
MSN: 32894/475
Year of manufacture:2004
Fatalities:Fatalities: 0 / Occupants:
Other fatalities:0
Aircraft damage: None
Category:Serious incident
Location:near GRASO waypoint -   Thailand
Phase: En route
Nature:Passenger - Scheduled
Departure airport:Tokyo-Haneda Airport (HND/RJTT)
Destination airport:Bangkok-Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK/VTBS)
Investigating agency: AAIC Thailand
Confidence Rating: Accident investigation report completed and information captured
Narrative:
Japan Airlines flight JL31, a Boeing 777-246 (JA707) and Thai Airways flight TG623, an Airbus A380 (HS-TUB) suffered a serious airprox incident.
JL31 was travelling along the flight route A1 UBL W1 GRASO Y13, from the east at FL400. However, due to heavy air traffic conditions, the air traffic controller (ATC) at the Bangkok Area Control Centre (BACC Sector 8) instructed flight
JL31 to orbit right, while the Airbus A380-800 aircraft flight TG623 was travelling along flight route A1 UBL W1 GRASO Y13 RUKSA DCT. While maintaining at FL400 on route A1, BACC Sector 8 instructed flight TG623 to fly in a direction of 270 degrees, which was the approaching flight path for flight JL31, resulting in a loss of separation between the two flights.
Vertical separation reduced to 500 ft. Horizontal separation reduced to 2.4 NM.

Causes
This serious incident occurred as a result of the following factors:
1 Air traffic controllers failed to monitor the movements of the aircraft under their control at all times, preventing them from correcting the situation in time.
2 Air traffic controllers used non-standard phraseology to issue instructions that lacked critical traffic information to warn both flights to act faster.

Accident investigation:
cover
  
Investigating agency: AAIC Thailand
Report number: 27/2019
Status: Investigation completed
Duration: 6 years and 2 months
Download report: Final report

Sources:

https://bea.aero/en/investigation-reports/notified-events/detail/serious-incident-to-the-airbus-a380-registered-hs-tub-and-operated-by-thai-airways-and-to-the-boeing-777-registered-ja707j-and-operated-by-japan-airlines-on-23-04-2019-en-route-investigation-led-by-aaic---thailand/

Location

Revision history:

Date/timeContributorUpdates
13-Apr-2023 17:01 harro Added
16-Dec-2024 08:50 ASN Updated [Time, Narrative, Accident report, ]
26-Jun-2025 12:07 ASN Updated [Location, Narrative, Category, Accident report, ]

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