Experience
 

I am new to the forum and find the discussion facinating on many levels. I had heard the Captain on this flight was not new to the Capt seat but new to the 757. Is this true?

From a human factors point of view and my own experience, this has far reaching implications. I spent 6 years in the right seat of the A/319/320. When I upgraded to Capt I was overwhelmed with frustration because little things were dropping through the crack...unthinkable things that never would have been missed before. The cause was not stupidity but mental orientation readjustment. Switches you automatically know the location of must be placed in a "new mental location." I am not incinuating this Capt was preoccupied with switch location. I am saying that brain byte usage on changed "automatic" behavior prevents brain byte usage on what others would see as the obvious.

If in fact that is not the case with Capt experience on this particular incident, I would suggest filing this away for that upgrade or plane changes. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to properly focus "brain bytes"

buscapt,
I do SO agree with your post.
And please, could anybody who was going to make hoohoo and heehee noises in answer to this post, first state formally that they HAVE NEVER switched on the windscreen wipers when intending to signal left.... shortly after having changed cars, or while driving an unfamiliar hire car abroad.

Oh, and.... captain? Never having flown anything with a sidestick, I can't even begin to imagine how you can suddenly swap at any time from a righthand sidestick to a lefthand one.
I would have thought it would take weeks, if not months to "reprogram" all your mental reflexes.....

Just a bit surprised that no one has yet mentioned the incident with SU at BCN:
http://www.fomento.es/NR/rdonlyres/E...005_IN_ENG.pdf

I find it hard to believe that you just hop from one side to the other from one day to the next without doing some simulator practice to retrain your brain to use your other hand. :confused: This is not a rental car but a commercial airliner operation...

On the light side. I was at the dentist the day after this happened and his assistant knows I am not a pilot but that I have an interest in aviaton.

She asked if I had heard about what had happened at Newark and went on to say she could not understand how a pilot could land on the taxiway, "the road where taxi cabs pick up passengers, it's right next to the terminal"...

Actually, Ernest Gann mentioned it back in post 65.

Initial NTSB report is now on their website:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...01X01592&key=1

does anyone have any thoughts as to PAPI positioning as mentioned in an earlier post?

From another forum for the PPRune armchair aviation experts:

Maybe, amidst all these lights the non-standard PAPI added up to the confusion; the crew trying to land somewhere to the right of the PAPI, if the crew had the 3rd or 4th leg that day, this could easily happen.....(is a nonstandard PAPI referenced in the charts anywhere?)

Celestar

Yes, here is the chart, but this is non-standard and we are all used to seeing the PAPI on the left side.
You can see from the diagram that the PAPI sits on the left side of the taxiway (Z but not designated on this chart).

sailor orion

the 10-9 chart, on the back side says that 29 has PAPI on RIGHT.


While most PAPI and abbreviated VASI are on the captain's side, one simply must read and brief all the info...the first suspicious thing I saw was PAPI-R

IN a briefing one might even say: PAPI on RIGHT side...so we better watch it and be sure to land to the left...

and once base to final turn has been made, one may check the glideslope before runway alignment...and then it might be too late...the mind sees what it wants to see.

Nice to see a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks and armchair analysts go to bat on this one. The bottom line is, they both fu*ked up. Period. No excuses. All nicety aside, lets call it for what it is, those guys landed a commercial jet on the taxiway.

Yes, it could happen to anyone of us professional pilots and we all make mistakes. Welcome to our world. All those years on flying these magnificent machines around the world can all come to an end with a simple "Oops..."

Hopefully the crew will get a second chance ('cause I'd like one too if I ever botch one up) but if they get the walking papers instead, oh well, we knew to expect them anyway. Our certificates and two dollars will not buy us a cup of house Starbucks. Yes, we do eat our youngs.

As for my quals, I fly the whale into KEWR on a regular basis. ;)

Once upon a time airlines would make a pilot who survived an accident serve a time as chief of safety or the like, hoping to glean all they could in accident prevention. He had the voice of experience, and other pilots tended to pay attention. :ouch:

Yes they did.

Accident/Incident investigations in the past were conducted to determine the course of action that lead to the problem. It was then the task of the investigations to make sure that this course of action will never happen again.

As soon as investigations try to find out whose fault it was, they're worthless.

It appears that such mishaps (landing on taxiway, take off wrong runway) happen rather frequently, sometimes with suboptimal consequences (SQ006 anyone); instead of blaming people, we ought to find out how to prevent it in the future.

Celestar

Having looked at the Jepp, with the caveat that I have never been there, those terminal bits must have been a bit close!:eek:

Sailor - you are right. We will indeed, always have this sort of event. Do we look now to see, perhaps, flashing/occulting red obstruction lights on the end of each 'parallel' taxiway, bright by day and dimmer at night? I have seen all sorts of 'closed runway' lights, including red x's, flashing reds, alternating reds. Is this the answer? It would not be that expensive.

I think a simple MALS (or maybe MALSR/MALSF) on the 29 would be plenty.

Sorry to mention a link from the "other side" :} , but I think it makes the point clear.
Properly lit runway

ok this is not MALS but ALSF-II (if I'm not mistaken), but the idea remains.

I think not that anyone would accidently land on one of the two parallel taxiways without noticing :)
Celestar

Agreed, but given a confusion of turnpike/shopping malls, street lights what-have-you ANYWHERE, would a system of 'barrier' lights not be a good/inexpensive idea?

I'm not sure, better ask the pros :)

article in boston hearld indicates taxiway Z is not illuminated with blue lights, though it does have green centerline lights...somehow this is OK by regs. banking right from base to final if the copilot caught sight of the HIRL and thought, well there is the left side of the runway, can't see the right side of the runway, somewhere down here...kind of thing

while yes, the pilots made a mistake and got lucky that no one was hurt, we must re think markings and lights as menitioned before.

it is amazing things like this don't happen more often.

See incident 5 in ‘TAWS Saves’ as another example of where an aircraft attempts to land somewhere other than a runway. The presentation that accompanied the paper (not currently available) provided a very clear view of the possible confusion that can be created by street lights, but ... the aircraft had already deviated from the correct flight path before the crew were ‘visual’. Again it shows how error can result from a combination of factors; it is these factors which need to be identified and either eliminated or mitigated with threat and error management.

Final defenses usually reside with the crew – and don’t overlook the possibility that both crew members suffered (the same) error in this incident, or if they did not, then further error prevented intervention.

The appropriate use of modern technology can provide appropriate warnings – the use of RAAS (PEI post 14), particularly as an error detector might have prevented this incident. But this equipment also has benefit in other situations; RAAS might have prevented the KLEX incorrect runway takeoff and the KSEA incident.

The identification of ‘clusters’ of incidents/accidents, which appear to have a common cause (error) and/ or solutions must indicate something to us surely?

Instead of the Monday morning quarterbacks and armchair analysts seeking more negative aspects, please provide some positive, helpful safety advice, by determining how all of us can avoid making such an error until our aircraft are appropriately equipped.

TAWS would not, I'm sure, have prevented this occurrence?
- I don't think we can! What is wrong with having warning lights as an interim measure?

…but RAAS would… RTFQ or something similar. TEM ? :) An error provoking situation? :p

alf5071h

safety rec:

always place the localizer and course of runway for takeoff...tune and identify prior to taxi out...same for landing and in this case tune up ILS11, place front course in HSI and the back course would lead you to runway 29


last time I checked, you didn't need any special equipment for the above.

and if you are on a runway and the needle isn't centered, your not on the correct runway

this would have helped in the kentucky crash, the SEA alaska airlines wrong runway takeoff and the landing on the taxiway at EWR.


jon

nerik, eastern wiseguy, earthmover, others. yes, there were indeed 2 landings on the same taxiway at gatwick, the 1-11 and an air malta 737.
the issues have been somewhat addressed since then. some background - gatwick has parallel runways but only one can used at any one time since they are too close to each other. the northern most runway is shorter and is used as a contingency for when the main is unavailable due work, or an incident. there's no ils on the northern, it's visuals or sras only.
the main factor was airport layout/lighting. the lights visible from approach during northern runway 26R/08L were confusing when compared to the lights visible on main runway 26L/08R operations. it's a little difficult to explain here without a picture but essentially the picture to pilots was very similar when either runway was in use and it could easily be misconstrued (ironically, probably more so if you were familiar with gatwick) as to which set of lights was which. when the northern runway is in use the only lights visible now are those on the runway. the taxiway lights are unidirectional and hence suppressed in the landing direction.
we also now have a system in the tower called an 'approach monitoring aid' or AMA which uses the radar to monitor (!) the approach (!) of the aircraft. it can be set to either runway and emits a audible warning when an aircraft reaches two miles and is off the centreline. at this point ATC is to ask if the aircraft is established/visual, if the aircraft gets to one mile, regardless of the pilot response, if the alarm is still sounding, the aircraft is sent around.
as an aside, in the 1-11 incident there was a ba 737 on the taxiway at the time of the landing and the 1-11 stopped 80m short of them.
there's bound to be some resolvable issues in this incident too. that may involve the changing of the airport layout or lights, addition of equipment or addressing of some crm issues. most likely a combination of all, and more. let's allow the investigators to do their job and learn from what they discover.

Hangten I agree totally my only input was for sake of clarity.Let the investigators do the work

EW

Pilots Returned to Duty
 

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/...ger?nnj&coll=1

From Today's NJ Star Ledger. The last paragraph mentions that the piolts involved in the incident underwent 'retraining' and have been returned to duty.

NTSB: Lighting A Factor In '06 Newark Taxiway Landing
 

"The National Transportation Safety Board's report concluded that "the flight crew's misidentification of the parallel taxiway as the active runway" led to the mistake, but added that night lighting conditions were a contributing factor."

http://wcbstv.com/local/newark.taxiw....2.689698.html

Just to add an ironic codicil, after "retraining" the captain's first flight was to RSW (Fort Myers, FL ). Where the main runway was closed and the landing surface? You guessed it..... the taxiway. There but for the grace........:)

I say "Well done, boys!" landing on a 70' wide taxiway, promote him!!
Seriously though, remember the BIA one-eleven landing on the taxiway at LGW one night? After the incident BIA became widely known as Bung It Anywhere.......

The report says the taxiway lights were green and brighter than the white runway lights. Ordinary colour blindness makes green indistinguishable from red (but white?). There is no mention of any check of the crew's vision before returning them to duty. The brightness of the lights has been readjusted.

It amazes me how much brighter the green taxiway centerline lights are than the runway edge lights at Newark. Additionally, the fact that an airport as busy as Newark has NO taxiway edge lights is ridiculous. The New York/New Jersey Port Authority has to share some blame IMHO.