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Old 17th Jun 2009, 12:29
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alanlush
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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Exclamation AVIACO landed a DC8 at Lagan Field years ago

Fortunatley it was an empty leg charter from the Canaries so there was only the crew on board. Captain had to deploy emergency braking after touching down on the disused and broken concrete runway with a big white X at the threshold! - remember the big red handle on the dashboard of the Diesel 8 - like a Mercedes hand brake?

Afterwards, in the de-briefing, he said that he had assumed that due to the war situation in Northern Ireland at the time, all the buidings were under camoflage - ditto for the lack of runway lighting!

In fairness, Lagan Field is on the same heading as Aldergrove - just a bit short of it. Unhappily, though there is a river at the end of the runway which he narrowly avoided. The RT between the landed DC-8 and the tower was hillarious - "Aviaco - we don't see you - which end of the runway are you at?" "The river end" "Aviaco - we don't have a river at the end of our runway" etc.

Undeterred, having established the error, he simply turned round and took off again and landed in Aldergrove - must have been quite a take off roll!

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