So the flightcrew did not realise they were talking to the Belgians?
I don't know. And even if they did, at first they would have expected to be talking to Brussels Control because they were lower than they usually were. But if they did realize it, they should have picked up on the fact that they were descending way too early for EDDF.
One fact that will have contributed to the confusion is that the approach controller that received the aircraft on the frequency only used 'Approach' instead of 'Brussels Approach'. And if i remember correctly, the tower only said 'Tower', not 'Brussels Tower'. And that combined with the same runway layout at EBBR and EDDF... I have parts of the radio transcripts somewhere.... I can try to find them if anyone is interested.....
So the flightcrew did not realise they were talking to the Belgians?
I don't know. And even if they did, at first they would have expected to be talking to Brussels Control because they were lower than they usually were. But if they did realize it, they should have picked up on the fact that they were descending way too early for EDDF.
One fact that will have contributed to the confusion is that the approach controller that received the aircraft on the frequency only used 'Approach' instead of 'Brussels Approach'. And if i remember correctly, the tower only said 'Tower', not 'Brussels Tower'. And that combined with the same runway layout at EBBR and EDDF... I have parts of the radio transcripts somewhere.... I can try to find them if anyone is interested.....
I'm intrested in those radio transcripts. If you don't mind, thanx ind advance.
There were a couple of errors in that case. First of all, a controller in Shannon who apparantly changed the destination. Second, the flight crew as some things didn't "seem" quite correct but they didn't react (the early descent, fuel, time, ATC callsigns, cleared to BUN VOR wich they didn't find on their charts and finally even the ILS frequency that just didn't match). And last, Belgian ATC for not noticing the wrong callsign (but I think this is understandable because I guess they get that kind of errors quite frequently). A funny note; because the NWA pilots where used to flying to Frankfurt, they noticed their fault on short final by the colour of the runway tarmac in Brussels (BRU was all black, FRA was concrete ,so was grey).
