Landing on Taxiways

[ItchyFeet2]

How common is it to confuse a taxiway for a runway?

[dv8]

About as often as putting this question in the Rumours and News forums instead of the Questions forum

Hold on tight were about to be moved

[FlyUK]

How often do you confuse back streets with motorways? ;)

[davethelimey]

Five instances here (http://www.faa.gov/runwaysafety/asw/airports/FTW.html).

Another (http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20040128X00118&key=1)

This (http://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation/occurs/occurs_detail.cfm?ID=319) one's particularly good.

This (http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_avsafety/documents/page/dft_avsafety_502520.hcsp) one took place at Gatwick, of all places, and involved a 737.

And there have been several incidents in pprune, which you'll find if you search for.

Apparently it's surprisingly easy :)

[411A]

The folks at AA seem to have become experts at this...recently anyway.
Hello Seattle.

[spekesoftly]

I don't know if it still happens, but in the days when Lightnings were based at Akrotiri, the pilots would practise landing on the taxiway (Exercise 'Block-Off' ?), for those occasions when the Runway might be temporarily obstructed. Given the Lightning's limited fuel, and the paucity of nearby and suitable alternates (No Airports at Paphos or Larnaca back then), it was a wise precaution.

[Lucifer]

As noted above, Gatwick has had a couple of instances of such, due to the nature of the parallel runways and taxiway, especially when the main runway has been unlit due to maintenance.

Landing on taxiways in not uncommon with runway blockages at RAF bases with single runways, where recovering the aircraft to another base may be an issue.

[Squawk 8888]

It's happened so often at St.-Hubert in Montréal that there's a caution about it in the Canada Flight Supplement entry for that field.

[FinalVectors]

Hi!

Its really not good when this happens without knowledge.

I worked at a military airport before, the "paralell" taxiway was used as alternate runways many times. with F16 flying thouch and go we normally used the paralell for light aircrafts and helicopters. Also during big exercises it was used for emergency runway in case of blocked main runway.

I also one time at another airfield landed a B-200 ambulance flight on the taxiway;)
Runway was in THICK groundfog, but taxiway was clear and they needed to land. It only meant little more coordination and use of the firestation to block the entrances to the taxiway for other vehicles.

Its after all a flat long surface, so works good as a runway...Its only not so wide:D

Final Vectors

[OverRun]

Landing on the taxiway is often not unreasonable from the ground perspective, provided a few precautions are taken.

The taxiway bearing strength is either the same or stronger than the runway (assuming that the parallel taxiway is open to all the aircraft that can use the runway and is not some light aircraft special). No strength problem there.

The taxiway surface has less texture and will certainly be ungrooved, so that high speed (>50 knots) in wet weather could present friction and aquaplaning problems.

The structural width is less than the runway, which means that crosswind can be a problem. Taxiway structural width is probably 23m, and for the larger jets (ICAO code 3C and upwards) there is usually a low strength 6-10m wide sealed shoulder on each side to reduce erosion and FOD. If the shoulder is there, then reverse thrust shouldn't be a problem. It would be a rare case that it isn't, but the worry then would be that the outer engines would be hanging out over the grass.

The other concern is crosswind and operations on reduced widths. That's discussed here:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114235

BTW – I vaguely recollect that at Gatwick, the parallel taxiway was designed to be used as a runway during closure of the proper runway. Very clever thinking. Avoids the unseemly rush of major runway repairs or overlays and work at night, and allows the job to be done right. I'm sure the guys at Cape Town wish they had had the same luxury. Not that I'm suggesting they rushed the job during the 6 hours they allowed for the work at night. Not the first time, nor when they redid the first time's overlay a year later ;)

[reynoldsno1]

The main taxiway at Auckland is being used as a second runway while the main runway is refurbished - it's even had a localiser installed....

[willfly380]

lots of time. have heard of quite a few and many go arounds at 50 ft .they dont go reported.

[ShyTorque]

Some of us have to land on taxiways a lot, especially at Heathrow (in block 97). ;)

Saves having to use those pesky runways....