PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - British Airways Incident at Johannesburg
View Single Post
Old 24th Dec 2013, 10:19
  #168 (permalink)  
Bealzebub
 
Join Date: Nov 1999
Posts: 2,312
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
This is an unfortunate taxiing accident. Lessons will be learned. It has absolutely nothing to do with mid-air collisions over Zagreb 38 years ago, nor landing accidents in San Francisco this year. Nobody was killed. Nobody was injured. An aircraft suffered serious damage and so did a building. Insurance will take care of both of those losses. There was no intent to cause this event.

The problem of runway incursions, communication failures, and airport signage, is a global one. It is a problem that is highlighted as a primary cause of accidents, potential accidents, and incidents. There will be very, very few professional pilots with any significant degree of experience who haven't found themselves involved in this type of problem on occasion. Given the global nature of the problem, cultural considerations and authority gradients are unlikely to play any significant role as a causal part of the problem.

The ill informed and the breathlessly excited will no doubt think otherwise, but there will be few professional pilots here who haven't been in similar circumstances that simply had a luckier outcome. Discussion arising as a result of this accident is a good thing at all levels, but the hijacking of a thread by all the usual suspects to promote the popular set of prejudices, ill informed opinion, and vacuous comment, really adds nothing other than post count.
Bealzebub is offline