Terror on holiday jet as pilot takes evasive action to avoid hitting plane

Their Boeing 737 was coming in to land at Palma airport on Majorca when the pilot spotted the other jet on the runway.

He pulled up sharply, avoiding disaster by only a few hundred feet.

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His emergency manoeuvre caused some of the 146 passengers to panic.

"It was terrifying," one said last night.

"We were coming in to land with the wheels down when the plane suddenly jerked upward and soared back into the sky.

"I'd say we were just a few seconds from touching down when the pilot aborted the landing."

He said a number of passengers screamed when the pilot forced the plane up using a surge of power which made the engines roar.

"It was a bit of a shock.

"For a few seconds we didn't know what was happening," he added.

"We were pinned back in our seats. I could see fuel tanks on the ground . . . we were that close.

"Then it all calmed down and the pilot told us what had happened.

"We circled once and then made the landing. Everyone was pretty relieved to get their feet back on the ground."

The flight, operated by bmibaby, had taken off from Manchester at 7.25am yesterday.

A company spokesman said: "The captain says that he was approaching the airport but was forced to break off the approach because there was another plane already on the runway.

"He pulled away, following standard operating procedures, and circled the airport briefly before making a safe landing."

The spokesman would not say whether Spanish air traffic control had warned the pilot about the other plane or whether the pilot took evasive action on his own initiative. Bmibaby is the budget wing of bmi, formerly known as British Midland.

Palma airport is Spain's third busiest and deals with 20million passengers a year.

The drama was similar to an incident involving a British Midland Airbus and a British Airways jet at Heathrow in 2000.

The BA Boeing 747 with 381 passengers on board came within 112ft of crashing into the Airbus which was waiting to take off.

The BA pilot spotted the other plane while heading toward it at 150mph. He acted with only seconds to spare.

A report the following year blamed the 'inappropriate actions' of an air traffic controller.

It has gone down as one of the worst near misses in British aviation history.

Every incident where planes pass within 1,000ft of each other has to be reported and investigated to see if there was a risk to the aircraft and passengers.

Last year, commercial planes were involved in 87 near misses, eight of which were found to be dangerous.

Also last year, a British Airways jet taking off from Tampa in Florida was forced to dive 600ft to avoid a collision over the Atlantic.

Two passengers and four crew members were hurt in the emergency descent.

A runway crash in Tenerife in 1977 is the world's worst aviation disaster. A KLM jet departed without permission and struck a PanAm jet, killing 583.