Originally Posted by
betterfromabove
There is one aspect of this incident that intrigues me and I don't think anyone has talked about yet on this thread, namely what the "sitting duck" aircraft on the taxiway did next...
If the event was THAT close to the United and PAL aircraft, it seems their crew was still happy enough shortly afterwards to proceed to line up and depart. Does this surprise anyone?
I'm coming at this from an HF point of view.
Must have been some very interesting conversations over coffee on those legs.....
Well, the question was already asked a while ago...
Originally Posted by
DIBO - July 18th
One aspect that I don 't expect to be covered in the NTSB report and given all the psychological insights given in this thread, how might this incident impact the front row witnesses. The PAL crew sitting in their big lame duck, nowhere to go or move, within seconds being blinded by big, bright landing lights coming straight at them. Depending on how much they saw this coming, it was all over in seconds (or a few dozen of it). How would they have keept their calm afterwards. Would you have kept your calm?
but not much reaction then...
Originally Posted by
galaxy flyer
As to the UA and PAL crews, what would expect them to do? Taxi back and leave 600 pax stranded. Close call, move on
For UA it was a close-ish call, with the pointy end well out of the way and aiming South, they missed most of "the show"...
For the PAL guys.... well they are probably made out of "The Right Stuff"... I'm certainly not.
But know that minutes later the PAL crew lined up and asked "confirm we're cleared for take-off?", while nothing of the kind was stated by TWR, their RT based SA (ref. EK Seychelles topic, with the crew being condemned by the pprune jury for missing completely RT based SA) seemd to be missing the constant 'inter-meshed' T/O's on the crossing rwy, including the one that was rotating the very moment they asked. But the PAL crew did the right thing: when in doubt, get clarification (unlike the E195 @BRU topic).
Was that merely an honest doubt/mistake?? Or still a bit shaken from things 15min. before?
The TWR controller surely wasn't a bit shaky, and given his firm reply, wasn't going to let things get screwed up twice in 15min. times....