Originally Posted by
BluSdUp
The CVR is overwritten and the crew can not recall overflying 4 aircraft!
WOW!
Originally Posted by
underfire
If what the report states is true, that the AC drivers did not even recognize the taxiway was full, that implies they did not see the landing lights, nor hear UAL 1. (or are not telling the truth) There is enough intent in their statement alone, (forget the lack of CVR data) to prevent those 2 from rotating again.
Time to stop making excuses for the airline, the ac, and the crew. Let DHS get the true story out of them.
Whoa, hold on a mo, I think there is some fundamental misunderstanding going on here. The Air Canada 759 crew
did see something on what they thought was Rwy 28R (but was actually Taxyway C), and queried it with the Tower:
NTSB 2nd August 2017 Update:
At 2355:46 PDT, when ACA759 was about 0.7 mile from the landing threshold and about 300 ft above ground level (agl), the flight crew contacted the ATC tower, mentioned seeing lights on the runway, and requested confirmation that the flight was cleared to land.
The Tower replied:
"Air Canada 759, confirmed, cleared to land Runway 28 Right, there is no one on 28 Right but you."
AC759 quickly replied:
"Okay, Canada 759."
Consequentally,
whatever the reasons for AC759 being incorrectly lined up with Taxyway C, the crew had just had their (unknowingly) erroneous visual and mental model apparently reinforced by the Tower. Neither side of that radio conversation knew
yet that things were badly wrong (the 4 aircraft crews on Taxyway C may have already had hairs standing on the back of their necks). The AC759 crew did have some initial unease about their odd visual picture, and queried it, but Tower (through no fault of his own), seemingly dispelled it.
United Airlines 1, right in the 'line of fire', seemed to be the first to raise real alarm, and did so by quickly transmitting (right on the end of AC759's reply to Tower):
"Wheres this guy going?"
"He's on the Taxyway!"
I believe it was those calls from UAL1 that probably then provided the serious startle factor for AC759. Very shortly thereafter they commenced a go-around, and Tower, now also aware of the potential disaster, ordered a go-around. A final report will, no doubt, clarify the precise timings and order for those latter events.
NTSB 2nd August 2017 Update:
"In post incident interviews, both incident pilots stated that, during their first approach, they believed the lighted runway on their left was 28L and that they were lined up for 28R. They also stated that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway C but that something did not look right to them."
I don't believe that the AC759 crew statements "that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway C but that something did not look right to them" mean that they did not see anything on Taxyway C - they
did see something there - lights - and queried it with Tower. When Tower told them the runway was their's to land on, in their mental/visual model they then had even less reason to think that the lights were aircraft.
For people here to express astonishment that the AC759 crew did not see this or that, or demand that heads roll because the AC759 crew might be lying, is really jumping the gun! AC759
did see lights, and had their verbal query apparently satisfied by Tower's reply. I suspect that it may have been UAL1's calls which suddenly brought the visual and mental models inside the AC759 cockpit into very stark focus, and the crew must have been frightened and then embarrassed in the space of a handful of seconds.
Give them some space people, for goodness sake! All we know, and they now know, is that something went terribly wrong. Only a final report will give us more insight into the reasons for AC759 lining up with Taxyway C and not the real Rwy 28R. In the latter stages there seems to have been a serious disconnect between where they thought they were and what they saw, when compared to where they actually were.
Human Factors studies are being devolped and refined all the time, and the subject is part of pilot license qualification and training. It also forms part of ongoing license requalification and retraining - we study it it because we are erring humans subject to sometimes insidious phenomena. If it wasn't important, we wouldn't need to consider the subject, would we? It could be that this incident is a variation on something already known about mental/visual pictures being mixed up, but whatever it is, quit the flipping armchair judge-and-jury nonsense. It sucks, and some of you do yourselves no favours by behaving like a lynching mob.