Jet narrowly escapes disaster. .WRONG WAY: China Airlines passenger jet clips snow berm after misguided takeoff.
. .By Zaz Hollander . .Anchorage Daily News
(Published: January 26, 2002) . .A China Airlines air bus carrying 254 passengers and crew members narrowly avoided catastrophe early Friday when pilots took off in the wrong direction and on a taxiway instead of a runway at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
In its takeoff just before 3 a.m., the plane came so close to running out of taxiway that its landing gear clipped a snow berm at the pavement's end before it gained altitude over Cook Inlet and flew on to Taipei, according to federal investigators.
"I think it's safe to say disaster was averted by inches," said Jim LaBelle, Alaska's top official with the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that mounted an investigation Friday.
Controllers instructed the China Airlines pilots to take off from a north-south runway but instead they used an east-west taxiway. Investigators and a China Airlines official say they still don't know why.
China Airlines is mounting an investigation of its own, said Hamilton Liu, the company's station manager at Anchorage. NTSB officials had already visited the company's head offices in Taipei by Friday afternoon.
Liu said it was too early to jump to conclusions.
"We don't know what actually happened yet," he said. "I'm waiting for their report, too."
The federal investigation will center on transcripts of air traffic control tower tapes, flight data recorder information and testimony from pilots. That information was unavailable Friday.
But air traffic controllers and Federal Aviation Administration officials provided enough information Friday for LaBelle to piece together a preliminary sketch of what happened:
At 2:43 a.m., controllers in the Anchorage tower cleared China Airlines flight O11 to taxi toward the airport's north-south runway, Runway 32. The big plane was preparing for China Airlines' daily 11-hour nonstop run from Anchorage to Taipei.
The three-man flight crew turned west onto a taxiway that connects to the runway. Then air traffic controllers cleared the plane for departure on Runway 32.
But instead of turning north onto the runway, the pilots accelerated west down the taxiway toward Cook Inlet.
They had a strip of pavement only about 6,000 feet long in which to gain the speed and lift necessary for takeoff, airport officials said. The taxiway also narrows significantly before it ends, LaBelle said.
The runway gives pilots nearly 11,000 feet of asphalt, officials said.
Taxiways and runways at the airport have different lights, striping and signs to help pilots distinguish between the two. Runways have white edge lights and center line lights, along with painted white edge lines and white dashes down the center. Taxiways have blue edge lights, painted yellow edge lines and green center line lights.
LaBelle said the NTSB investigation will look at the experience and training of the three-man flight crew, condition of airport equipment, the crew's duty time or problems communicating because of a language barrier.
"It would not be unusual if there was a language issue," he said.
English is the international language of aviation. Under an agreement with the International Civil Aviation Organization, pilots must demonstrate enough English to communicate with controllers, according to Joette Storm, the FAA's spokeswoman in Anchorage.
Taiwan government officials are responsible for making sure the China Airlines pilots can communicate, Storm said. Any airline approved to fly in the United States must also meet FAA requirements.
Airport officials -- notified of the incident just after it occurred -- said they didn't know of any mechanical problems with the taxiway or runway.
"All lights were working, everything was functioning," said airport manager Corky Caldwell. "Weather conditions were good. It was clear and the runways were clear of ice and snow."
In 1983, a Korean Air Lines cargo jet beginning its takeoff in the wrong direction on the wrong runway smashed into a Kenai-bound commuter plane in heavy fog at Anchorage. No one was killed. Investigators mainly faulted the Korean Airlines pilot for failing to follow procedures.
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