China Airlines taxi-way take-off!
From the KINY website.. .Wrong way takeoff made at Anchorage's airport
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an incident this morning in which a China Airlines plane took off in the wrong direction and on a taxi-way instead of a runway.
Jim LaBelle, who heads the agency's Alaska office, says the China Airlines Airbus A-343 had about 250 passengers and crewmembers on board when the incident occurred shortly before 3 a-m at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
The plane was directed to take off on the north-bound runway. Instead it took off on a west-bound taxiway over.
The plane departed safely, but LaBelle says the landing gear grazed a snow berm at the end of the taxiway as it lifted off.
LaBelle says investigators will listen to tapes of the radio transmissions between the China Airlines cockpit and the control tower to determine what went wrong.