PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Near miss with 5 airliners waiting for T/O on taxiway "C" in SFO!
Old 18th Jul 2017, 11:12
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Ian W
 
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As I said way back this was a cognitive misperception - expecting an approach to the rightmost of 2 runways the pilot sees two rows of lights and his brain says that is the right hand runway. From then on that is what he sees a runway. if you don't think that is possible and didn't read my post before - consider this your vision cannot see a ball in flight as it is not seeing for much of the time - your brain fills in where that ball is. It is why you have to teach children to catch balls. However, you will claim you watched it all the way as your brain makes you think that you did.

So visual spatial cognitive channel is showing the taxiway as a runway and the anti-collision lights were perceived as traffic on the runway. Instead of a voice call - that worked but might not have, one or more of the aircraft putting on all their landing lights would have destroyed the illusion immediately far faster than the R/T call.

For those who are blaming all the in-cockpit entertainment toys available these days, these kind of misperceptions were happening back when those toys were not available. It is unfortunately part of the way our brains work. Knowing that these cognitive issues arise there are better ways of ensuring people do not land on a parallel taxiway than switching off all the lights on one of the runways (red cross there or not) as pilots looking for two runways see a runway and a taxiway and some will see two runways as that is what they expect to see. It would have been better if 28L had remained lit and ATC had reminded everyone that 28L was out of service.
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