Finnair A340 attempts takeoff from taxiway
 

Accident Investigation Board Finland - Entry page

"Serious incident occurred at Hong Kong international airport when an Airbus A340 aircraft operated by Finnair Plc on a scheduled flight from Hong Kong to Helsinki initiated takeoff from a taxiway which was located next to and parallel to the runway in use. The air traffic control noticed the occurrence and ordered the pilots to abort the takeoff."

Incredible.

Finnair A340 Hkg.
 

Well spotted by the tower, this could have been a real problem considering the A/C would have been loaded to the gills with fuel and considered a "HEAVY". Find this difficult to understand what the guys in the cockpit were thinking. Sounds like sombody is going to be in serious trouble considering the heavy hitters who are going to conduct the investigation. However I wish the cockpit crew the best in this unfortunate incident, good luck.:ok:

How many times before someone has the bright idea of colouring the taxiways with red asphalt?

:ok:

I don't think there is any excuse that would justify an error of that magnitude.

Passengers have a right to expect high levels of professionalism from the front - and that's why we had taxi charts for each airport . This could so easily have had fatal consequences.

BTW, yes I've operated into there - but we did have 3 sets of eyes in those days.

This incident if, of course, serious but frankly I am surprised it doesn't happen more often. Airports seem to be becoming much more complex with a plethora of signs, taxiway designations and routing, designated holding points etc and, generally, more pressure on crews in terms of slot time, exhausting schedules and having to "expedite".

Dengue_Dude, that's very easy to say. Of course, it shouldn't happen but we have to recognise that human beings are capable of error and that they are part of the "system". As you adriotly point out we used to have 3 (and sometimes 4 or even 5 in my young day) pairs of eyes and ears watching what was going on. I wonder how many incidents in the "olden days" were prevented by a sharp Second Officer in the jumpseat speaking up? - I know as I was one of them and did so on a couple of occasions.

We should not be premature to "blame" the crew. No crew sets off to work with the intention of making a major blunder - will be interesting to see how all the holes in the cheese lined up on this one.

"Well spotted by the tower, this could have been a real problem considering the A/C would have been loaded to the gills with fuel and considered a "HEAVY" "

Are the taxiways not as long as the runways in Hong Kong?

Our RAAS shoutes "on Taxiway,on taxyway" should you try to... if not on a runway and above 40 kts...

see here:

Finnish media now report the Finnair head office spokesman saying there were indeed three pilots in the cockpit "and they all agreed the aircraft was where it was supposed to be" :hmm: when they were accelerating down the taxiway... so much for the three sets of eyeballs :rolleyes:

In Russia they ask you if your gear is down and locked.. Why not start asking if the runway is identified or have an electronic sign with random letters you have to read back to the tower located next to the thresh hold:-) Sound dumb? then so is the blue, orange and green line at Munich airport. I like the earlier post of having taxiways in different colour or just have small speed bumps on taxiways so a take off would be obvious. There is no excuse for this except that its human error and we are humans, so it does, can and will happen.

have the localizer "on" on the runways

have the aircraft's nav radios on the assigned takeoff runway...tuned and identified (at the gate if you can).

make sure needle is centered before starting takeoff roll.

Oh here we go again with the " You can't possibly blame the crew yet as you don't know the facts" ish arguments.

Fact: Irrefutably the aircraft commenced its take off run on the taxiway (I've taxied down them, I do KNOW what they're like).

Apparently there was a 3rd set of eyes on the flightdeck too.

Yes modern airports are more complex than they used to be, so even more reason to concentrate - that's why airline front ends usually get paid the big bucks.

I reiterate that the punters have the right to expect high levels of professionalism from the crew. This couldn't have happened here because of the fact above. Whatever happened to the old adage 'don't assume - check'.

I flew from 1973 to 2009, no crew I was on did anything like this. We've even taxied around crappy airports in Africa in the middle of the night, with controllers that barely spoke the language - and we still didn't do this.

10/10 for the Chep Lap Kok tower/local.

The PC brigade can now have a go at me, but frankly, I don't give a ****. The only possible understandable mitigation would be LVPs which can be incredibly fraught, but that obviously wasn't the case since ATC gave the call.

2 questions.

Has the runway got white edge and centreline lights and were they on?

Has the taxiway got green centreline lights with blue edge lights at corners and were they on?

Sir George Cayley

TWY vs RWY
 

How many times you need to study the difference between the RWY and TWY edge lights or lamps ?
I am sure that "FireflyBob", even if alone in cockpit (2 eyes only) in the middle of the day should easily spot the difference.

The aircraft heavy or not does not matter, if TWY was the same length as RWY, as they usually are, the ONLY problem would be if other aircraft was using the same TWY...

PS
I guess this incident might have to do something with sushi and ooooo'sake

Indeed.
Historically this is one of the recurrent incidents, often several per year.
From memory and picking at a few official reports the common themes seems to be poor signage, poor or missing lighting and work in progress.
Add an unfamiliar and complex airport at night and you have a powerful recipe for loss of situational awareness.
There is seldom a simple cause, just the proverbial holes in the swiss cheese lining up again. The official report will, as usual, make interesting reading.

The man who never made a mistrake never made anything.

We might actually be in the presence of a bonefide skygod in Mr Dude. All those years flying and never made a mistake that could have led to the aircraft being endangered? Now that would be some claim and worthy of the above title. Perhaps, sir, you should read the report on the DAL crew who landed on the taxiway at their home base, Atlanta, last year. You might have roundly questioned their 'professionalism' as you say, but perhaps even you might even accept that there was a lot more to that incident (and likely this one) than lack of professionalism...

I venture to say that 999 out of 1000 pilots [ myself included ! ] could easily make the same claim. Perhaps even a greater percentage. Otherwise flying would REALLY be unsafe.

Edit: I only put in 30 years flying these things.

Dengue Dude

1977. KLM Chief Pilot launches on the Runway as Pan Am taxis opposing, same asphalt. Lots of experience, lots of ego, lots of FO fear. If anyone learns, how soon they forget, eh?

I am no PPL holder or can call me a pilot in any case (other than on my iPhone and rc helis, ha ha) - but I work in Medicine. Before we even attempt to do a procedure as simple as a contrast injection or a thyroid biopsy we have to do what is called a timeout - verify patients name, the procedure and the side. This has to be signed by the MD (me) and a witness and is a legal document. So, if we attempt to do the left nephrectomy of Ms Smitt we verify the side, procedure and the patient, so that Ms Smith and we have a chance to actually leave her with her kidney and better remove the appendix...

Now, YOU guys have 100+ pax behind you and are still able to take of from a taxiway (at least attempt to), fully loaded with fuel on a many ton multimillion dollar piece of equipmeni. Why is there no checklist point included into the pre takeoff CL verifying the actual runway? Last point - verify runway heading as given by clearance. It seems to me that these incidences are way too often to be just happening occasionally - and some are deadly. I remember a couple, adding to the DAL in Atlanta I believe there was a Continental in NWR landing on a taxiway...

Link Would appear they are not the first... including "locals", so instead of jumping to criticise, there appears to be something there making this rather "possible" :{

NoD

Grimmrad

In all airlines there are procedures in place that would have the crew verify the runway/runway intersection, the performance has been calculated for that intersection etc. I believe a lot of threat and error management techniques in medicine were originally derived from aviation systems.

The problem happens when distraction or complacency interfere with the threat and error management model it leads to an incident. Much like in medicine where they still have cases of removing the wrong part. Aviation still has cases of taking off on the wrong runway.

Rwy ident
 

We have a simple procedure that prior to entering the any runway the PF announces "Entering RWY XX", and PNF confirms it. In addition I always have the airport diagram with my little green GPS driven plane on one of the displays.

Hopefully this will prevent this kind of thing happening to us. (Knock wood).

"We might actually be in the presence of a bonefide skygod in Mr Dude."

I'd suggest actually in the presence of a competent captain. (And that would be "bonafide," unless you maybe mean "bone-fried.")

Surgeon says, "Oh, man, I just severed his spinal cord!" Should the rejoinder be, "Hey, it happens to all of us now and then. Deal with it." Hope not.

From following this thread and many others, it seems to me, a mere 3,000-hour light-twin and small-jets pilot, that we have increasingly few skygods and increasingly too many skydorks.

@ Helmut Smokar: Point well taken. No intention to say that we are perfect, you are not... And we have some more guys to pay attention as well (like the guy in the tower), thank god.
However, as apparantly some of you in your profession do as well, I have made it a habit to lean back and ask myself "OK, what did I miss" to raise vigilance. And not to be content if you have found one thing (I am a radiologist) but now to try if you find something else. E.g. don't be content if you found a tumor in the kidney - they often come in pairs...

Helmut Smoker: and much of aviation rules are derived from shipping

grimmrad that makes you a sailor not an MD :}

Midst the automated splendour that is the A340 there still seems to be a place for a Tom Tom with a worldwide database of airport layouts and a big symbol saying "you are here".

I suspect BearFoil has hit it bang on the button. Perhaps it is the van Zanten syndrome that stops people saying "Hey I am unsure where the hell we are, perhaps I'll ask the Tower for a bit of guidance here".

NoD,

I can ensure that the lightings and signboards at VHHH are so clear that even a layman can identify which is the RWY, which is the TWY. Just ask yourself how do the RWY lights look like, what are the colours and the TWY vice versa?

Lack of situational awareness or lapse of concentration? I don't know.

Perhaps that corner of the airport is the Bermuda Triangle of VHHH - someones will get lost! Up to now, four carriers (three foreign and one local) had attempted to take off from TWY A.

While the case is being investigated, new instruction has been issued that no take off clearance can be issued until we "see" the aircraft is physically on the subject RWY.

Not sure which runway this incident happened on but 07L at night is a bit of a navex and if you go vai taxiway 'B' it does seem to take a long time to taxi North past 'A' and then on to the runway. The lack of any Cat 1 and 2/3 holding point signs and completely different lighting on a taxiway should be cues enough but we have a requirement to mention the signage when entering what we think/know is the runway.
I agree with the surgeon that to just sit back for a couple of seconds and regard what you're about to do with the detached 'common sense' of an amateur would save a lot of red faces (and maybe prevent a catastrophe). Leave your egos at home ladies and gents. This could be you...........

Arfur,

No CAT II/III holding points on TWY A and B is because the GP is on the northern side of RWY 07L. I do agree with you that 07L is the "darkest" corner of the airport at night.

While to err is definitely human, this still shouldn't happen. AY charts even have the 07L hotspot marked, but it's easy to overlook (assuming the T/O was from 07L). The report will make intresting reading, I fear the CVR will be overwritten though.

Not knowing the facts of course, but I wonder what the experience levels on the flight deck were. Rules were changed some time ago to permit co-pilots with as little as 2 years of airline experience to long haul ops and the skippers are not all very senior either anymore.

I'm just SLF, but wouldn't it somehow have made sense to delay their departure for a quick breathalyzer check after a little snafu like that?

Not that Finns are known to be heavy drinkers or anything, but just as a precautionary measure..?

Reading some of the posts on this thread confirms my suspicion that perfect pilots outnumber imperfect ones by a factor of at least two to one, but imperfect pilots tend to be flying and the perfect ones come on to forums and pontificate from their all-seeing perches.

I prefer to wonder what shortcomings in systems and procedures could be addressed to minimise the chances that the imperfect pilots who man most operating aircraft in the world suffer the indignity of not being perfect.

As a complete lay person, non pilot, pax only - why aren't taxi ways or runways given a specific colour? I know; lighting / metamerism, different weather conditions, at night &c but what is the reason why not?

How wide was the taxiway?

It is a shame that the 'follow the green lights, stop at the red' taxiway system used at LHR is not implemented elsewhere.

While no system has complete safety, this one does seem to raise the bar.

It's only speculation, but it might be a case of tunnel vision by the flight crew. There have been cases where flight crew have been so preoccupied with departing on time, arriving on time, fuel management etc etc, coupled with being very familiar with the airport and a degree of complacency, that they have become almost blind to the surrounding enviroment leading to poor decision making and sometimes fatal consequences. I'm trying to remember an incident of this nature taking place a few years ago. For some reason, Singapore rings a bell where an aircraft tried taking off on a closed runway, with construction equipment cluttering it, in extreme weather conditions. The flight crew were trying to depart before the weather became even worse, which would have involved taxiing back to the stand and a serious overnight delay. Anybody remember this?
In the meantime, it would be very unfair to blame anyone without all the facts being available!

Grimmrad,


It's more than a little condescending to imply the medical profession has a better record than aviation with respect to human errors.



I see countless errors in medicine reported every day (removal of the wrong limb, organ, incorrect medicine prescribed etc, etc.



And these are just what are reported, the reports certainly don't include the cover ups, pay offs and 'settlements'



In fact, if aviation only had to meet what is accepted as a normal medical loss rate we would need another airframe manufacturer just to keep up with 'attrition'



Unlike Doctors we don't have the opportunity of burying our mistakes.

don't they train for this in the ATPL then ?

we would do it all the time in the UK when our runways were waterlogged

our preferred taxiway had a bend in it too

+1

A very close relative of mine, who retired with accident free 44years of commercial flying/18000+hrs, told me when I started flying that if someone claims he does not make mistakes in the cockpit, he either is a liar or not a pilot.

I personally find signalling, lighting and local habits sometimes to be very confusing. But then, I only fly a Citation, what do I know...

Perhaps GRIMMRAD should ask Santa Claus for a copy of this.....!

Amazon.com: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (9780805091748): Atul Gawande: Books

From what I have read, as a broad generalisation (always dangerous), in most hospitals generally surgery is in approximately the same situation as major airline flight operations in the 1960s, i.e. pre sophisticated checklists and pre any idea of Crew Resource Management. Which is not to say that aviation always gets it right, things slip through the cracks far too often!

Airlift21, you are referring to Singapore Airlines SQ006 at Taipei in 2000:

Singapore Airlines Flight 006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia