Worst accident in aviation history narrowly averted

[vorlon13]

Visibility good enough to see lights on 4 planes directly in his way, but apparently not of sufficient import to suggest to the pilot he is making a boo-boo.

Almost wonder if landing aircraft was half way filled with CO or something.

[bennyboy]

The pilot called it in.

AFAIK the SFO requires computer-assisted landing, so if the plane was locked on wrong, it could have been a problem with the airport systems, the plane's systems, or the pilot.

But that's not so bad-- that's WHY we have a pilot. . . so he can look out the window and say, "Ummm. . . something feels wrong here." Or he can look out the window and say, "Why is that plane aiming to land on the taxi lane?"

IMO, this is a success story for human pilots, not a failure story for the one pilot.

[vorlon13]

Passing directly over 4 loaded/fueled planes at ~400' is plenty close enough for me to be profoundly concerned.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Isn't ILS still turned on for VFR landings in commercial aircraft?

[johan]

Isn't ILS still turned on for VFR landings in commercial aircraft?

The ILS is always on. Unless it isn't i.e. unless its broken or down for maintenance. At a high volume airport like SFO, I would doubt they close the runway in VFR conditions just because the localizer is out of service. I don't know if the localizer was OOS in this case nor if any of the runway lights or PAPI were not working. But I don't think they'd stop using the runway if it were. 

Flying out of Teterboro once, none of the runway or taxiway lights were working. Still had to wait for three business jets to land before we could take off. Having no lights didn't slow down their operations one bit.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Harrison Ford landed on a taxiway a few months ago.

[Anomalocaris]

Harrison Ford landed on a taxiway a few months ago.

A fully loaded Singapore airline b747-400 tried to take off on a closed taxiway a few years back, and hit construction equipment working on the taxiway.

[vorlon13]

Passing directly over 4 loaded/fueled  planes at ~400' is plenty close enough for me to be profoundly concerned.

UPDATE:

Miss distance was 100 feet, not 400.


Do I need to add:

Jesus Fucking Christ !!

[johan]

UPDATE:

Miss distance was 100 feet, not 400.


Do I need to add:

Jesus Fucking Christ !!

You can add it if it makes you feel better. But honestly, this part of the story concerns me very little. Maybe its because I spent most of my aviation career flying way less than 500ft from the ground and tons of people. Maybe its because I'm just jaded by the way the news media treats absolutely any story involving an airplane as though its a fucking miracle that the entire population of the planet wasn't wiped out in one fell swoop. Maybe its because I'm just an asshole. Probably a combination of all three.

Here's the thing, 100ft seems like such a small number. My god it was only 100ft, oh the humanity.... Until you realize that airplanes fly, its what they do. What I mean by that is airplanes, especially large transport category airplanes, do not just randomly lose 100ft of altitude for no reason. Yeah sure turbulent air at altitude can cause those kinds of deviations, but below 500ft? It just doesn't happen. Because if it did, we'd have airliners crashing short of runways several times a week. When was the last time you heard of that kind of accident scenario?

Then you add in the fact that at SFO and tons of other airports landing aircraft pass within 100ft vertically and laterally of aircraft waiting to take off several times an hour 24 hours a day. 

And of course lets not forget the fact that almost everyone in the western world passes within four feet of another moving vehicle literally hundreds of times per day. And often does so at speeds which would more or less guarantee a fatal outcome should that four feet distance decrease to zero for any reason. And we all do this without batting a fucking eyelash as though that dashed yellow line painted on the road would magically protect us somehow. 

But its an airliner and its 100ft and OMG run for your lives!!!!

The pilots knew something was up. The controller knew something was up. The pilots in the taxiing airplanes knew something was up and all involved spoke up about it. A go around order was issued and a go around was executed. Everything worked EXACTLY was it was supposed to and not one person walked away with so much a scratch. This is really barely a news story at all. Meanwhile at least two or three people lost their lives car accidents within a 100 square mile radius of nearly every person in the US today and most of those accidents will not be reported in the news anywhere.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think the potential number of casualties is what's driving the coverage.

And while I'm no pilot, I do know that the lower the altitude, the shorter the recovery time. And iirc, Delta 191(? Might have that wrong -- D/FW Aug 1985, anyway) got dropped by wind shear on approach from about 500' AGL. Granted those conditions weren't extant here, but at 150 kia, SHTF pretty quickly.