Author Topic: Incident: Delta Airlines B763 at Atlanta on Oct 19th 2009, landed on taxiway  (Read 31594 times)

Offline mk223

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I just caught this and wanted to share it.

Incident: Delta Airlines B763 at Atlanta on Oct 19th 2009, landed on taxiway

http://avherald.com/h?article=42187f22&opt=0



Offline sykocus

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Landing on a taxiway at your company's home airport. No bueno.

Offline atcman23

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Um.. whoops.  Yeah those blue lights indicate taxiways, not Delta's special runway.

But since there was a medical emergency, I have to wonder if the urgency of the situation on board may have contributed to this.

Offline sykocus

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Um.. whoops.  Yeah those blue lights indicate taxiways, not Delta's special runway.

But since there was a medical emergency, I have to wonder if the urgency of the situation on board may have contributed to this.

Sure, but we're talking about professional pilots on a wide-body international route. Probably not rookies.

Offline BRAVO2ZERO

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NEED TO HEAR CVR ON THIS LANDING. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN A CATASTROPHY

Offline atcman23

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Um.. whoops.  Yeah those blue lights indicate taxiways, not Delta's special runway.

But since there was a medical emergency, I have to wonder if the urgency of the situation on board may have contributed to this.

Sure, but we're talking about professional pilots on a wide-body international route. Probably not rookies.

Yeah I know, I think in the end something may have happened while the aircraft was lining up on the approach.  Good thing here is that nobody was hurt (at least relating to the aircraft landing on the taxiway).

Offline joeyb747

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Here is a news story with a short vid. Pretty strange...

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=136570&provider=top

Offline thesirius728

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My first thoughts after hearing that were "What the f***?". I mean seriously, how could this happen? Anyway, I won't speculate anything further, we don't know what happened in detail, but this sounds too crazy to believe  :-o

MOD: Language edited out. Keep in mind we have some younger members who read the forum as well. Thanks.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2009, 11:20:38 PM by Jason »

Offline phil-s

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Metar, if I read it correctly, said wind calm. Seems like with any significant cross wind this would almost certainly have been a catastrophe. Does the NTSB report for an incident like this always include the CVR transcript?

Offline Steelrman

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Here is a news story with a short vid. Pretty strange...

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=136570&provider=top

At the end of the video they say no one was injured on the flight.  No reference to the "medical emergency" patient. I'd like to know how they're doing.  Poor reporting.

Offline marcoleon

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Offline jrsx

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This in the archives? Love to hear that conversation

Offline tyketto

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This in the archives? Love to hear that conversation

If you have a look at the feeds, you will notice that we have no KATL feed.

BL.

Offline w0x0f

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James Fallows has an interesting take on this story as it relates to the NWA incident at MSP.

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/10/from_an_airbus_captain_and_rec.php

w0x0f

Offline jmx53

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James Fallows has an interesting take on this story as it relates to the NWA incident at MSP.

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/10/from_an_airbus_captain_and_rec.php

w0x0f

I wonder why none of the other reports about this don't make any mention of the runway change inside the marker like this article does.  Still, it's hard to think 2 trained pilots confused white with blue in 10mi vis when the stakes are so high for being wrong.  The reports say that approach lights and ILS were inactive...What about the REIL strobes on either side of the threshold?

Offline atcman23

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The runway would need to be equipped with the REILS and if it was, chances are if the approach lights were off, the REILS were probably off too.

Offline jonnevin

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It is very easy to say that this never should have happened, because, of course, it shouldn't have. But armchair quarterbacking from the low stress environment behind a computer screen is easy to do.

What is relevant about this is that it is yet another case of a chain of events leading up to an unfortunate result, not one thing.

1) long int'l flight)
2) perhaps higher stress flight throughout due to check pilot presence
3) check pilot gets ill, my understanding is that he physically got ill on the flight deck and you can imagine the distraction the remnants of  that would cause
4) landing dark
5) runway lighting system not standard
6) relatively last minute runway change
7) no other planes on the taxiway to give away that it was in fact a taxiway
8) busy tower that was unable to notice the error happening.


Offline mk

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not busy in the predawn hours of the morning...and unless you had eagle eyes, it would be nearly impossible if not impossible to tell from the tower if an airplane were lined up for a runway or 200ft right of the runway.

Offline jonnevin

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Agreed that's it a slow time of day at ATL, but
that's still relatively busy to other fields.

Wasn't referring to visually noticing flight off
center but rather via the radar where it would
be quite obvious it was off localizer centerline.

Offline jeffcyn

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Offline dave

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Long live the Freedom of Information Act.

Offline swayze84

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Shy of the tower asking the ramp (gate?) to have the captain give them a call, there seemed to be no mention of the incident.  Obviously, we weren't there and don't know how this unfolded in the cockpit or tower, but would a controller speak to the protocol for something like this?  Is it preferred to let the medical emergency focus on getting to the gate before raising concern about deviations such as landing on a taxiway?

Offline joeyb747

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"The NTSB have released their final report on Nov 15th 2010 concluding the probable cause of the incident was:

The flight crew’s failure to identify the correct landing surface due to fatigue.

Contributing to the cause of the incident were

(1) the flight crew’s decision to accept a late runway change,
(2) the unavailability of the approach light system and the instrument landing system for the runway of intended landing, and
(3) the combination of numerous taxiway signs and intermixing of light technologies on the taxiway."


From:

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=42187f22/0000&opt=0