I'm not really surprised. I believe that taxiway has been used for landings and take offs since last summer. It's not a 15-20 meter wide taxiway, it's 40 (45?) meters wide, and when I was there some 8 months ago, it was equipped with white runway edge lights and had a Papi.
These guys have probably been operating in and out of there many times during the main runway closure and had their mind set on a slightly high workload, sidestep procedure in limited vis into an airport with questionable ATC service. Were they transferred to Tower? Don't know, but it's not that unusual to forget a transfer when both pilots are slightly stressed and looking for a non standard landing taxiway.
OK, it was Notam'd. Maybe they did not get it, maybe it was misread, maybe they didn't read it (non of us have ever neglected to read all the NOTAM's, right?), maybe it was unclear, maybe they got different information from approach, maybe, maybe.
In this case I simply think the CAG trap was set a long time ago.
It could have been me.
Last edited by ManaAdaSystem; 15th Apr 2009 at 00:17.