Excerpted from today's New York Times.
WASHINGTON, July 25 - With his plane hurtling down a Kennedy International Airport runway at nearly 100 miles per hour, the first officer of a DC-8 cargo jet looked ahead through the darkness and driving rain and asked the captain sitting at his left, "Is that an aircraft in front of us?"
The captain who gave the account was acting as the co-pilot, and as his eyes alternated between the windows and the instrument panel, he looked ahead but did not see anything. But the first officer saw what he thought were lights, the captain said, and asked again, "Is that an aircraft in front of us?" He swiftly took action, pulling back on the yoke and lifting the roaring jet's nose sharply into the air.
A disaster was averted by the narrowest of margins: the ABX Air DC-8 missed a fully loaded Israir Boeing 767, with 262 people on board, by 75 feet at the nose, the captain estimated, and as little as 45 feet at the tail, which was much lower because of the angle of the plane during its ascent. ....
In an interview on Sunday night, the captain of the cargo plane, Kerry McMahon, gave his first public account of the dramatic seconds when the two planes nearly collided. The first officer, who has not been identified by ABX, "did an outstanding job," Mr. McMahon said. "I'm glad I was flying with him that night."
Mr. McMahon said the two planes avoided collision because his plane was not carrying cargo and because the first officer decided shortly before takeoff to use full-power settings because of the weather. Had that not been the case, he said, the cargo plane would never have made it over the 767 flown by Israir, an Israeli carrier.
"We were empty," Mr. McMahon said. "To me, that's the reason we missed that aircraft. If we had been loaded down, we would probably have hit him."
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The 767 had stopped halfway down the runway, at a place where planes about to take off are typically moving at more than 100 miles per hour, nearly fast enough to become airborne. The Israeli government's chief air safety investigator, Itzhak Raz, said Israir's crew members told him that they had seen the DC-8's lights and thought someone was taxiing toward them.
"I don't want to say it 100 percent, but it's very possible that at this time, they were like freezing for a second, praying to God not to have an accident," Mr. Raz said of the Israeli crew. "It was very close."
A spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board said that her agency was still waiting for audio and radar tapes and other information from the Federal Aviation Administration. The F.A.A.'s preliminary report, which Mr. Raz said matched what he knew so far, found that the Israir plane had missed a turn onto a taxiway and ended up on the runway instead. According to Israir, which began serving Kennedy Airport from Tel Aviv in March, the plane held 250 passengers, 9 flight attendants and 3 pilots. The DC-8 carried a crew of three.
Israeli officials, who asked not to be identified because the incident is still under investigation, said the captain of the Israir flight had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.
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It is typical at airlines for the captain and the first officer to alternate roles during takeoffs. In the flight from Kennedy, Mr. McMahon said, it was his turn to serve as the "nonflying pilot," and as the plane approached the runway, it began raining hard.
Airline policy at ABX is to take off at reduced power settings, a practice that requires traveling more distance on the runway before takeoff but limits wear on the engines, he said. But because of the weather, the first officer asked if he could use full power. "I said, it's your leg, you make the decision, and he said he's more comfortable with that," Mr. McMahon said.
As the plane accelerated down the runway, the first officer looked out the windshield and the captain managed the radio communications and focused alternately on the windshield and the instrument panel. The plane was moving at more than 80 knots, or nearly 100 miles per hour, when the first officer asked whether there was an aircraft in their path. Mr. McMahon looked but did not see one. It was far too late to stop, he said - they could have steered off the runway and into the dirt, but probably would have hit the Boeing anyway.
After the first officer asked again, "Is that an aircraft in front of us?" he pulled back on the yoke, lifting the nose, a maneuver known to pilots as rotation. But once he had spotted the passenger jet, he pulled back hard so the climb would be abnormally steep, Mr. McMahon said.
The captain estimated that his cockpit was probably only about 75 feet above the fuselage of the 767, and that since his plane was 187 feet long and was pointed up very steeply, the tail was much lower. Mr. Raz calculated that if the DC-8 were at a 10-degree angle, its tail would have been about 45 feet above the fuselage. Fully loaded, the top of the Boeing 767 fuselage is about 23.5 feet off the ground. The tail rises about 30 feet above that.
The unauthorized presence of a plane or other vehicle on an active runway, known as "runway incursion," has been a major concern for years. In order to prevent it, the intersection at Kennedy Airport through which the Israir plane mistakenly crossed has a line of amber and red lights embedded in the concrete.
"After we got over him and I knew we didn't hit him, I called the tower and told them there was an aircraft on the runway," Mr. McMahon said. The tower controller did not immediately respond, he said, and Mr. McMahon repeated the information, to be sure the controllers on the ground understood the problem before clearing another aircraft for takeoff. "Do you understand, that there's an aircraft on Runway 22, right?" Mr. McMahon said he repeated.
Mr. McMahon said there was a slight pause, and the controller replied, "Yes, we're talking to him now."
Mr. McMahon did not find fault with the Israir crew. He said that in the dark, it was easy to get lost. "I've been there with bad weather before, and I can put myself in the same position as the other captain," he said. "He basically missed that turn, and I can see why."
Mr. Raz said of the first officer, "It was a very good decision to take off and not to try to stop or steer from the runway." He added, "It was very, very lucky, that's for sure."