Air Canada flight nearly lands on crowded San Francisco taxiway

[Manny 1,293]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40571913

 

How is this even possible? What checklist procedure did this crew not  do?  Even if its VFR landing, wouldn;t you have to dial in the ILS? Especially at night?

[Luke 782]

Given the relative brightness difference on the lights, this is very surprising. I expect it would be hard to deliberately find and land on a taxiway at night.

Cheers!

Luke

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

22 minutes ago, Manny said:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40571913

 

How is this even possible? What checklist procedure did this crew not  do?  Even if its VFR landing, wouldn;t you have to dial in the ILS? Especially at night?

 

How is this even possible?

Anything is possible when humans are involved and it wasn't the first or will be he last time their is an aviation fatality due to pilot error.

 

What checklist procedure did this crew not  do?  

Not sure what the checklist would have to do with flying a visual approach and landing? Check lists don't usually have a box that says "Land on correct runway".

 

Even if its VFR landing, wouldn;t you have to dial in the ILS? Especially at night?

Not necessarily and would probably be dependent on the airline SOP, but airline pilots frequently fly visual approaches sometimes into runways with no ILS. 

Was Harrison Ford flying this approach? 

[Jim Young 2,356]

It happens quite frequently.  Here's one at 6 am into Atlanta - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33420756/ns/travel-news/t/plane-lands-taxiway-atlanta-airport/#.WWUigumQz-g

I just did a Google search and you can see more - https://www.google.com/search?q=airliners+landing+on+taxiway&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Even Harrison Ford did it! 

Best regards,

JIm

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

Live ATC of the event:

http://link.trekcubed.com/ac759-sfo-070717-goaround.mp3

 

[spesimen 135]

2 hours ago, Manny said:

 

How is this even possible? What checklist procedure did this crew not  do?  Even if its VFR landing, wouldn;t you have to dial in the ILS? Especially at night?

the 28L is closed for construction at night recently because they are repaving it or something. presumably the lights for 28L are off so he may have thought the 28R and the C taxiway were the L and R runways

relavant NOTAMS

!SFO 07/043 SFO RWY 10R/28L CLSD DLY 0600-1500 1707110600-1707131500

cheers,-andy crosby

[spesimen 135]

1 hour ago, cmpbellsjc said:

 

 

Even if its VFR landing, wouldn;t you have to dial in the ILS? Especially at night?

 

the LDA/DME approach is offset to the right by 1183 feet (for separation purposes during dual runway ops i think) so that may have been a contributing factor if he was using that one instead of the ILS approach. it may be pretty common under normal circumstances to use that approach instead of the ILS, i don't know for sure though.

http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/SFO/IAP/LDA_DME+RWY+28R/pdf

cheers,-andy crosby

[garrett_frank 150]

Wait, you can't land on taxiways?

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

3 hours ago, spesimen said:

the 28L is closed for construction at night recently because they are repaving it or something. presumably the lights for 28L are off so he may have thought the 28R and the C taxiway were the L and R runways

relavant NOTAMS

!SFO 07/043 SFO RWY 10R/28L CLSD DLY 0600-1500 1707110600-1707131500

cheers,-andy crosby

This makes sense, I didn't realize the landing was just after midnight. Not sure what the weather was at the time but sometimes a change in routine can cause disorientation. Lights out on 28L and he shifted his way over thinking 28R was 28L, creature of habit.

[Murmur 3,941]

Big event, it's making the front page on online newspapers in Italy too.

[tf51d 284]

12 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

This makes sense, I didn't realize the landing was just after midnight. Not sure what the weather was at the time but sometimes a change in routine can cause disorientation. Lights out on 28L and he shifted his way over thinking 28R was 28L, creature of habit.

Weather could definitely played a role here, remember San Francisco is known for it's fog.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

11 hours ago, tf51d said:

Weather could definitely played a role here, remember San Francisco is known for it's fog.

Yes but it is also summer when it is more likely to be clear, I was going to check on Active Sky what the conditions were like but not much chance this week with work

12 hours ago, Murmur said:

Big event, it's making the front page on online newspapers in Italy too.

Also in New Zealand, and as I am a Canadian in New Zealand everyone here seems to want to tell me about this.

[spesimen 135]

2 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Yes but it is also summer when it is more likely to be clear, I was going to check on Active Sky what the conditions were like but not much chance this week with work

san francisco is notorious for being foggy in the summer at night. huge fog banks roll in once the sun sets and temps drop to 12c or so.. i can't remember the last time our 4th of july fireworks weren't mostly obscured by fog.

things can be a bit different at the airport since it is on the interior of the bay and protected somewhat by the hills on the coast. lots of microclimates in this area, even just in the city where the west half will be foggy but it will be clear and 3-5c warmer in some of the neighborhoods in the valley areas. i haven't had a chance to look up the METAR at this time either but it's quite possible there was a low ceiling

cheers,-andy crsoby

 

[Oracle427 45]

I haven't checked the histiorical METAR either. In the spirit of speculation I will throw this out. Wouldn't they have had to be using a published approach such such as ILS or RNAV if the airport was obscured due to a low layer or fog?

In that case they should have been lined up on the runway unless they used approach guidance to a different runway and then side stepped to the incorrect runway once visual contact was made. I'm not familiar with the SFO approaches and practices.

[jcomm 5,886]

Well, some years ago a TAP ( Air Portugal, simply the Best airline in the World! ) landed at one of the taxiways at São Paulo airport, Brazil:

http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/wrongrunway.html

No problem with that - provided it's done by an experienced pilot :-) and the crew is certified to land on taxiways!

New EASA norms are very strict about landing on taxiways.... Requires training and recent experience on the full flightsim.