Belgian investigators have opened a probe following an airprox incident at Brussels in which a flight apparently departed without clearance.

The 5 October event, which occurred after sunset, involved an Air Dolomiti aircraft, operating under a Lufthansa callsign as LH4TX, departing runway 07R.

It came into conflict with an Aer Lingus service, EI638, which had been cleared to land on the intersecting runway 01.

Air traffic control transmissions of the incident, archived by the LiveATC site, captured the controller informing the departing flight: “You were not cleared for take-off.”

The aircraft had previously been given an instruction to line up and wait.

While the crew apologises for the “misunderstanding”, the controller states that he will have to file a report.

Belgium’s federal public service for mobility and transport says its air accident investigation unit has started an investigation into a “near-collision” incident at Brussels.

It does not specifically reference the take-off conflict but says the incident involved “two aircraft of different airlines”.

Source: Cirium Dashboard