Posted on 07/11/2017 9:51:32 AM PDT by Lonely Bull
SAN FRANCISCO — In what one aviation expert called a near-miss of what could have been the largest aviation disaster ever, an Air Canada pilot on Friday narrowly avoided a tragic mistake: landing on the San Francisco International Airport taxiway instead of the runway.
Sitting on Taxiway C shortly before midnight were four airplanes full of passengers and fuel awaiting permission to take off, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is investigating the “rare” incident. An air traffic controller sent the descending Air Canada Airbus 320 on a “go-around” — an unusual event where pilots must pull up and circle around to try again — before the safe landing, according to the federal agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Not saying this is anything other than a very serious incident, but the chances that the Air Canada plane actually would have hit any of the planes on the taxiway may be very small, even if he had come in a lot closer. (NOT saying I would ever want to have been on any of those planes at that moment).... he would have seen the planes more clearly as he got closer, and although reaction times would have been short he still could have powered up to go around....... or landed beyond the 4 waiting planes..... OF COURSE no one would ever want anyone to have to try their luck in such scenarios, but I doubt it’s any automatic “biggest airline disaster in history scenario”..... still, much too close a call !!!!
I’m not sure what their procedure is, but that sounds reasoned.
Your best bet would be to ask Robe, Post #4.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3568405/posts?page=4#4
I think the pilot in command of the aircraft in question did the right thing in notifying the controller of his concerns. I’m guessing the controller called “go around” sooner than the pilot did. Actually, the pilot could have started the “go around” before announcing it. Not the best practice. I certainly would have been been ready to firewall the throttles! Just a subtle change of hand position.
Harrison Ford flying for Air Canada now?
Yup. ILS. No idea how this could have happened. It does not make sense.
Wasn’t just “this guy”.
That airplane had at least two pilots.
Remember it was an A320 that took-out many acres of trees about 20 years ago because they couldn’t get the engines out of idle in time.
Snoop “Soul Plane” Dogg at the controls.
I did the same thing. Hashes on the runway were snow-blown, there were no aircraft on the taxiway, and it was only me in a Beech B19.
Oh, and I was a student pilot.
And Approach advised me that I was lined up wrong so I slipped on the final and actually hit the runway with room to spare.
That would seem true. I can’t help but be curious how this happened. It seems like it would be very hard to make this mistake.
Before I clicked on the thread, I had a premonition that I would see a post just like yours. I must be psychic.
A go-around is not an ‘unusual’ event.
Dam this is bad... at the very least the Air Canada pilots career is done.... how the hell do you line up on the taxiway and not the runway.. they have a line of light point right down the center-line of the runway
Harrison Ford the pilot?
Or Foster Brooks perhaps?
Don’t forgot the ground base Instrument Landing System (ILS)that tells the pilot and aircraft their approach vectors.
A test pilot I knew (RIP, cancer) told of an occasion when he was ferrying some corporate execs from one plant to another in very windy conditions.And as he was approaching the destination he was considering how tricky the landing and shutdown of his Cessna was going to be in such a high crosswind. At that point the destination tower called him, and asked if he wanted to land on runway 32 (or whatever it actually was, I dunno). He replied, “I sure would!” (the number of a runway, for those who don’t know any more about it than I did when he told me the story, is the heading, expressed in tens of degrees, an aircraft would approach it for a landing) and then asked himself what they were talking about.
Then he realized that there was a short section of taxiway which had that heading - and since he was flying a light plane with a low landing speed into the teeth of a high headwind, he would have no difficulty landing there and being able to deplane his passengers.
So there is at least one case of a taxiway identifying as a runway.
I am not a pilot but I now SFO very well having flown in and out of it hundreds of times. This Canadian pilot must of had some kind of impairment to mistake that TW for a runway. It is plain as day, clearly lit and marked.
This is irresponsible journalism as usual. In no way was this a near miss. The landing pilot saw the aircraft on the ground. There was no way he was going to land on them.
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