Newswatcher - thanks for the info. Here is the latest from the Anchorage Daily News.
Controllers didn't try to stop jet. .WRONG WAY Airbus going too fast to stop, tower crew thought.
. .By Zaz Hollander . .Anchorage Daily News
(Published: January 30, 2002) . .A sudden hush fell over the Anchorage air traffic control tower early last Friday morning when controllers realized a rapidly accelerating China Airlines jetliner was about to take off the wrong way and from a taxiway instead of a runway.
The Airbus 340, carrying about 250 people, had pulled away from the international terminal, according to Joette Storm, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Anchorage. It was around 2:45 a.m. Two FAA controllers -- with a third person, who was on break -- were working the tower.
The tower had just given the pilot his takeoff directions. Once the tower realized the Airbus was on a takeoff roll down a relatively short taxiway, controllers decided not to intervene, investigators said Tuesday.
The controllers' silence as they realized they were too late to stop the errant plane was revealed this week to investigators who reviewed a recording of communications between the tower and the pilot.
"Once they brought the power up and were rolling and the controller noticed it, they did not call for an abort," said Scott Erickson, the National Transportation Safety Board's chief investigator on the incident. "I think they were a bit concerned about whether they were going to get airborne."
The controller communicating with the China Airlines pilot cleared the aircraft for takeoff on the airport's 11,000-foot-long north-south runway. The pilot read back the instructions in English, the universal language for air-traffic control.
The controller turned away for a instant, Storm said. "When he turned to look outside again, the plane was on its way down the taxiway."
Given the plane's considerable speed on the 6,000-foot-long taxiway, controllers determined "it would be better to allow them to proceed," she said.
The jet got off the ground but came "inches from disaster," as one investigator put it. Its landing gear cut divots in a snow berm at the end of the taxiway.
The flight landed safely in Taipei later Friday. China Airlines over the weekend grounded the three-person Taiwanese crew until further notice, according to Hamilton Liu, China Air's station manager at Anchorage.
China Airlines officials told The Taipei Times that the suspension of their flight duties is company policy and does not imply guilt.
The Airbus 340 is a new aircraft for the company, Liu said. But he added the pilots are experienced flying other types of aircraft.
China Air is cooperating with the NTSB, FAA and with investigators from the Taiwanese equivalent of the NTSB, he said.
The NTSB investigation will probably take several months, Erickson said. Investigators will analyze the pilots' training and experience and the possibility that language barriers led to communication problems, among other factors.
A parallel FAA effort will investigate the quality of communications, pilot certification and the working condition of airport navigational aids. Taiwan's flight safety officials have reviewed the plane's black box and are communicating with the NTSB by e-mail.
Many questions linger, baffled aviators say.
"That was so close to a real disaster," said Felix Maguire, president of the Alaska Airmen's Association. "It's just incredible how they got away with it."
Why didn't other members of the flight crew question the pilot, given the abundant lights and markings that distinguish the taxiway from the runway? Didn't the plane's instruments tell the flight crew they were not on the 320-degree heading of their assigned runway but a 240-degree heading?
"Which is 80 degrees off," said Maguire, a former commercial pilot who flies a corporate jet. "Any pilot with basic training should know that."
Reporter Zaz Hollander can be reached at
[email protected]
[ 31 January 2002: Message edited by: Sick Squid ]</p>