Attempts to take off from or land on taxiways are alarmingly common, including those by Harrison Ford:<p><pre><code> Harrison Ford won't face disciplinary action for landing on a taxiway at John Wayne Airport [1]
Serious incident: Finnair A340 attempts takeoff from Hong Kong taxiway [2]
HK Airlines 737 tries to take off from taxiway [3]
Passenger plane lands on the TAXIWAY instead of runway in fourth incident of its kind at Seattle airport [4]
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[1] <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ford-taxiway-agreement-20170331-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ford-taxiway-agr...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.aviation-safety.net/2010/12/03/serious-incident-finnair-a340-attempts-takeoff-from-hong-kong-taxiway/" rel="nofollow">https://news.aviation-safety.net/2010/12/03/serious-incident...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/hk-airlines-tries-to-take-off-from-taxiway-316283/" rel="nofollow">https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/hk-airlines-tries...</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3378645/Passenger-plane-lands-TAXIWAY-instead-runway-fourth-incident-kind-Seattle-airport.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-337864...</a>
There's an mp3 of the radio chatter here:<p><a href="https://forums.liveatc.net/atcaviation-audio-clips/7-july-ksfo-ac759-go-around/" rel="nofollow">https://forums.liveatc.net/atcaviation-audio-clips/7-july-ks...</a><p>> Audio from the air traffic controller communication archived by a user on LiveATC.net and reviewed by this newspaper organization showed how a the confused Air Canada pilot asks if he’s clear to land on 28R because he sees lights on the runway.<p>> “There’s no one on 28R but you,” the air controller responds.<p>> An unidentified voice, presumably another pilot, then chimes in: “Where’s this guy going. He’s on the taxiway.”<p>> The air controller quickly tells the Air Canada pilot to “go around.” telling the pilot “it looks like you were lined up for Charlie (Taxiway C) there.”<p>> A United Airlines pilot radios in: “United One, Air Canada flew directly over us.”<p>> “Yeah, I saw that guys,” the control tower responds.
Here's a night approach on 28R at SFO.[1] Same approach during the day.[2] The taxiway is on the right. It's a straight-in approach over the bay. The runway, like all runways at major airports worldwide, has the standardized lighting that makes it very distinctive at night, including the long line of lights out into the bay. This was in clear conditions. WTF? Looking forward to reading the investigation results.<p>The planes on the taxiway are facing incoming aircraft as they wait for the turn onto the runway and takeoff. So they saw the Air Canada plane coming right at them. That must have been scary.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMtMYUGjnQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMtMYUGjnQ</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7_lzFKCSM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7_lzFKCSM</a>
English is not my native language, but shouldn't the headline have read "SFO near miss would have triggered aviation disaster"? "Might" seems to indicate that something else happened afterwards as a possible result of the near miss
The moral of this story for me is: be that "another pilot." To be clear, "another pilot" of another aircraft. Not as clear as it could be just like the title of this article is ambiguous.<p>The moral of this story for me is: call out immediately if you see something off. He's the real hero. Even if the ATC controller immediately saw the plane being misaligned at the same time - that feedback confirming another set of eyes on something that is off couldn't have hurt. All 1000 people on the ground needed that feedback. Always speak up in situations like this.
In the early 1960s, a pilot mistook a WW2 airfield for Heathrow, and landed his 707 on it, barely stopping before the end of the runway.<p>The runway being too short to lift a 707, mechanics stripped everything out of it they could to reduce the weight - seats, interiors, etc. They put barely enough gas in it to hop over to Heathrow, and managed to get it there safely.<p>The pilot who landed there was cashiered.
Before crying pilot error, we must all read Sydney Dekker's A Field Giude to Understading "Human Error" (and fully appreciate why he uses those quotes). Don't immediately assign blame to the sharp end. Take a look at the blunt one first. Most likely not a pilot error. Assigning blame is a very human need, but assigning it to the most visible and accessible part is almost always wrong.
A different kind of error... I was returning from Las Vegas in the middle of the day and the tower cleared us for departure on 9 and another plane on 27. We had taxied out and then the pilot pulled over, turned around and waited for the other plane to depart. He told us what had happened - there was a bit of frustration in his voice. Imagine pulling up and seeing another plane sitting at the opposite end of the runway ready to go. (it may not have been 9 and 27 I don't know which pair it was) Earlier waiting in the terminal I had seen a different plane go around, but didn't know why. Apparently there was a noob in the tower that day. This is why you look out the window and communicate.
Possible explanation for why this happened: it was night, and the parallel runway 28L was closed and therefore unlit. The pilot may have mistaken 28R for 28L and hence the taxiway for 28R. This comes nowhere near excusing this mistake (there is no excuse for a screwup of this magnitude) but it makes it a little more understandable.
I wonder just how likely this was to end in disaster. It feels overstated. The pilot in question seemed to think something was wrong, he just hadn't figured it out yet. I imagine he would have seen the aircraft on the taxiway in time to go around on his own if he hadn't been warned off.<p>I'm having trouble figuring out the timeline. The recording in the article makes it sound like this all happened in a matter of seconds, but it's edited down to the highlights so that's misleading. LiveATC has an archived recording of the event (<a href="http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-Twr2-Jul-08-2017-0630Z.mp3" rel="nofollow">http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-Twr2-Jul-08-2017...</a>, relevant part starts at about 14:45) but even those appear to have silent parts edited out. (That recording covers a 30 minute period but is only about 18 minutes long.) In the archived recording, about 40 seconds elapse between the plane being told to go around and the "flew directly over us" call, but I don't know how much silence was edited out in between.<p>Certainly this shouldn't have happened, but I wonder just how bad it actually was.
People "could" run their cars off of bridges every day, but they don't because they can see, and because roads have signs warning them of curves.<p>This sounds like a story of how well the aviation system works more than anything. The pilot is in constant communication with the tower. The system worked as intended here and he went around.<p>It seems like a non story.
Found a cockpit video of a landing approach to 28R to give you an idea (daylight, good weather etc)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Y6GTI9pg4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Y6GTI9pg4</a>
Near as I can tell HIRL could not have been on, they were not following another aicraft to land, and the runway and taxiway lighting must've been sufficiently low that the taxi lights (low intensity version of a landing light) on the queued up airplanes on the taxiway, made it look like the taxiway was the runway. Pilot fatigue, and experience at this airport also are questions.<p><a href="http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/SFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28R+(CAT+II+-+III)/pdf" rel="nofollow">http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/SFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28R...</a><p>All runways have high intensity runway lighting (HIRL) and 28R has touchdown zone and centerline lighting (TDZ/CL). Runway lights are white, taxiway lights are blue. If you see these elements, there's no way to get confused. So my assumption is the pilots, neither of them, saw this distinction.<p>HIRL is typically off for visual landings even at night. That's questionable because night conditions are reduced visibility situations and in many other countries night flying is considered as operating under instrument rules, but not in the U.S. You do not need instrument rated aircraft or pilot certification. For a long time I've though low intensity HIRL should be enabled briefy in the case of visual night landings, where an aircraft is not following behind another, at the time "runway in sight" verbal verification happens between ATC and pilot.
Without knowing the cause but if I had to guess this looks like pilot error. At least statistically that the leading cause of crashes.<p>I am surprised pilots still manually land planes. Is the auto-landing feature not implemented well enough? But then it's relied upon in low visibility. So it has to work, they why isn't it used more often?
AFAIK (not that I follow the issue closely) the problem of radio interference that ended the last-chance attempt to prevent the Tenerife crash has not been addressed [1]. If so, then it may be very fortunate that only one person called out that the landing airplane had lined up its approach on the taxiway, and not, for example, the crews of every airplane on the taxiway, simultaneously.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.salon.com/2002/03/28/heterodyne/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2002/03/28/heterodyne/</a><p>TL;DR: At Tenerife, both the Pan-Am crew and the tower realized that the KLM aircraft had started its take-off roll, and both tried to warn its crew at the same time, but the resulting radio interference made the messages unintelligible. The author states that a technical solution is feasible and relatively easily implementable.
This reminds me of the runway incursion incident at Shanghai, in Oct 2016:<p><a href="http://www.jacdec.de/2016/10/11/2016-10-11-china-eastern-a320-and-a330-in-runway-incursion-at-shanghai/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jacdec.de/2016/10/11/2016-10-11-china-eastern-a32...</a>
The avherald article has a slightly more factual account of the event (with links to the ATC recording): <a href="https://avherald.com/h?article=4ab79f58" rel="nofollow">https://avherald.com/h?article=4ab79f58</a>
Incidentally, I heard a story on KQED (SF Bay Area public radio) today that mentioned a potential clue. There are two parallel runways on this heading -- however -- the left runway is closed for repairs and therefore is currently unlit. If the pilot didn't remember this (it would have been included in his briefings and approach charts for the flight, but he may not have internalized it), he would likely have been looking for two parallel runways and would have lined up on the right one, which in this case would have been the taxiway...
I'd like to suggest that if you are still interested in learning more about what happened, you should look for a video from "VASAviation" on youtube. I'm sure his subscribers have asked him already for analysis and he's working on the video.<p>The channel focuses on aviation comms channel.<p>I find it informative because the youtube channel provides detailed voice/video/photo/analysis of incidents (actual/close-calls) involving planes/passengers taxing/landing/taking-off in/around airports.
I wonder why on 35R they wouldn’t have the taxiway to the left of the runway. Then the “right” is always the runway. Same for the left. Basically have parallel taxiways on the opposite side of the R/L designation of the runway. So at SFO, the parallel taxiways would be inside the two runways.<p>However, approach lighting is pretty clear, but at dusk, I agree with another comment that it can be rather hard to distinguish depending on angles. I think that approach would be landing into setting sun, so that could have some bearing.
It's not a near miss, it's a near hit.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM</a>
Aren't there lights that have to line up if you're on the right course for the runway like with nautic harbors?
Or warning lights that are visible when you're not aligned correctly?
Does anyone know just how close of a call this was? Was the landing aircraft 100, 200 meters above ground?<p>How many more seconds until they would have been too slow to pull up?
How will an autonomous system handle this issue? Will it figure out the light colors of runways vs. taxiways or will it rely close geolocation capabilities?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. [1]<p>Is it just me or is this blatantly off-topic? Or is anything major happening in the bay area automatically on-topic for Hacker News?<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
I am just a passenger, but this looks very over-blown. A pilot aligned with the taxiway, that's bad. But no pilot would ever land on a runway (or taxiway) with 3 planes on it. Just search the Aviation Herald for "runway incursion". And indeed, he spotted them, communicated, went around.<p>Aviation safety margins are so wide that this does not qualify as a near-miss.
Obligatory George Carlin<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM</a>
Theoretically - if the plane had landed, how many planes would it have taken out? It obviously wouldn't have been pretty, but I doubt the AirCanada would have reached the fourth plane, or maybe even the third.
I always wondered what about SFO makes it so much more dangerous than the other airports in the area? It seems like they have a potential disaster every couple years.
Paint the runway and the taxiway in different colors and also use different colors for the light signals that illuminate them at night. Blue/white is rather confusing. Use clearly distinguishable colors such as red/blue or orange/blue or magenta/yellow.