Pilot criticised after '˜near miss' saw RAF Tornado narrowly miss glider

The Tornado was flying at low level at about 483mph on the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire border near Headon airfield when it passed 300ft beneath the “startled” microlight pilot.

In a report by Airprox, which looks into all such incidents, investigators also heard that military maps were also being redrawn after it emerged the site of the civilian airfield in Nottinghamshire was marked in the wrong spot - by half a mile.

While the warplane’s male pilot was “entitled to fly where he had”, the board of inquiry concluded a wiser course of action would have left more room for manoeuvre. It also emerged that the pilot of the multimillion-pound Tornado, packed with state-of-the-art navigation kit, failed to spot the smaller aircraft as he passed 500ft above the ground.

The near-miss only emerged after the microlight pilot flagged the incident to the authorities, once safely back on the ground.

Airprox concluded the incident on October 2, last year, was a “Category A”, meaning “a serious risk of collision has existed”.

The report stated: “Essentially, the Tornado pilot was threading the gap very finely between these airfields and, although his planned routing would have taken him clear of Headon airfield had it been marked on the charts correctly, he had left very little margin for error and would have been wiser to have allowed himself much more room to manoeuvre.”