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Bloomberg
The US Federal Aviation Administration is implementing recommendations it rejected six years ago that could have prevented pilots from nearly landing last month on a taxiway crowded with jetliners awaiting takeoff in San Francisco.
The National Transportation Safety Board in 2011 recommended a software upgrade to ground radar systems that would warn when a plane is landing in the wrong place. But the FAA dismissed the recommendation, declining to even study whether it was feasible, according to government records.
In an announcement issued since the San Francisco near-collision, the FAA says it has begun over the past year doing what the safety board recommended and testing could begin in a few months. “We believe recent technological advances may now enable us to modify our ground surveillance systems to detect aircraft that are lined up to land on taxiways,†the agency said.
Air Canada Flight 759 was approaching the San Francisco International Airport just before midnight on July 7. Instead of heading for the runway, pilots lined up about 500 feet to the right, aiming for a parallel stretch of pavement where four planes were preparing for takeoff, according to the NTSB. The tails of the first two planes on the ground were about 56 feet high, just three feet below the landing plane’s lowest altitude, according to the safety board.
“Where’s this guy going?†a pilot in a United Airlines plane that was at the head of the line said in a radio call to the airport tower. The air-traffic controller didn’t warn the Air Canada pilots until after the cockpit crew had already aborted the landing.
The potential risks of such a collision have been highlighted by several similar instances in the past, including when actor Harrison Ford landed a small plane on a taxiway in February at John Wayne Airport in California.