Posted on 08/03/2017 9:37:18 AM PDT by BenLurkin
An Air Canada Airbus A320 attempting to land last month in San Francisco very narrowly avoided hitting several other taxiing airliners...
As it approached San Francisco International Airport to land on July 7, Air Canada Flight 759 mistakenly lined up with a taxiway where four planes were waiting, instead of a runway. The captain of the Airbus A320 aborted the landing....
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As Flight 759 passed over the first airliner, a United Airlines Boeing 787, the Air Canada crew aborted its landing. The crew commanded full power from the engines. At that point, it was just 85 feet above the ground. Two and a half seconds later, the A320 dipped as low as 59 feet before climbing, according to NTSB data. For comparison, the height of the tail of a 787 is just shy of 56 feet.
The second airliner on the taxiway...had switched on its landing lights, apparently to make itself visible to the inbound jet, the NTSB said.
Two other aircraft, another United Boeing 787 and a 737-900ER were also on the taxiway as the Air Canada jet climbed away.
The pilots on the Air Canada jet told NTSB investigators they thought they were lined up for runway 28R as they came in to land around midnight PDT. Parallel runway 28L was closed for construction and was unlit except for a 20-foot illuminated 'X' on it. The Air Canada flight was instead headed for taxiway C, parallel to 28R.
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The taxiing United 787 called the control tower just before the Air Canada jet aborted its landing, asking, "where's this guy going?"
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According to the safety board, a system designed to monitor ground traffic at San Francisco lost the approaching A320 for about 12 seconds, only reappearing as it passed over the first airplane.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I though the voice recorder was supposed to record for two hours before overlaying the previous recording?
I HATE when I do that!
Was Harrison Ford at the controls?
............I heard it was those two women that forgot to raise the landing gear back up a few days ago............................s/
SEE Canadians suck they must be destroyed...
Yikes.
How about painting the end/beginning of runways RED or GREEN so this mistake can’t happen.
A couple gallons (maybe more) of paint could potentially save hundreds lives.
This has almost happened several times recently.
Runways are lit in different colors already, paint would not be visible at night. This was gross pilot error.
Apparently the AC plane realized they were landing on a taxiway about when they were over the first of four planes waiting to take off. They narrowly missed the first two before the command to lift took effect between the second and third planes.
Discussion on a pilots’ forum seems to be divided on whether the disaster was avoided because of an ATC instruction or the pilot’s realization but the avoidance began just about when ATC alerted them.
Either way, the error should have been recognized 30 seconds or more earlier when the plane was 2-3 miles out.
The cause is apparently related to the fact that there are two parallel runways and a taxiway, and lights were out on the far left runway, which was the subject of a “NOTAM” that the pilots supposedly read in their briefing. Either they forgot about it, or lost situational awareness (they thought the right “runway” which was actually a taxiway was their target runway and the target runway was the unlit runway.)
Apparently this has happened several times before at various airports when lights are out on runways that are normally lit. As for color coded warnings, there is a big red X in lights at the end of the taxiway. And taxiway lights look different from the air than runway lights. But with the planes on the taxiway, it may have created the illusion that the lights were more similar.
Basically, this mega-accident was avoided by about three to five seconds according to the information available.
“The crew commanded full power from the engines.”
I love it when non-aviation writers try to sound cool.
Nice article, Maverick.
Holy smokes!
bttt
As a non-pilot I can certainly see how such a mistake could be made if one were only to rely on ones eyeballs.
What a horrific incident that would have been.
Runway 28R has both and ILS and PAPIs. You would think that the Air Canada pilot would at least glance at ILS for runway centerline guidance plus look at the PAPIs for visual descent guidance.
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