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Federal air accident investigators have recommended a set of improved cockpit and ground safety systems to reduce the risk of accidental landing of airliners on taxiways rather than on designated runways. .
The action of Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board was triggered by a near-collision in July 2017 involving a landing
Air Canada
A plane that was flying about ten feet above the tail of another airliner waiting to take off from the San Francisco International Airport.
"We could not have literally, or figuratively, been a major disaster," Bruce Landsberg, vice chair of the safety committee, said at the hearing, highlighting the growing dangers of such mistakes.
The pilots of the Air Canada Airbus A320 were tired, failed to prepare properly for the descent and erroneously headed for the taxiway for planes preparing for departure, according to the NTSB. The jet began to climb a few seconds before the touchdown, flying over four airliners lined up on the same traffic lane filled with passengers and tons of fuel.
In addition, pilots received warnings in computer messages indicating that one of the two parallel runways was temporarily closed.
The airline said, "Based on internal reviews and collaboration with US and Canadian authorities, Air Canada has put in place measures to refine its training and procedures and has acquired new technologies to improve safety.
In the light of busy airspace and congested airports, the incident "should make clear how much an error can be costly," said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the safety committee.
At around midnight, neither the flight crew nor the only air traffic controller working in the airport tower immediately realized the proximity of the aircraft, which caused serious concern among the airlines , regulators and external experts. The close call has already served as a catalyst for large-scale changes, from staffing airport towers to changing ground radar systems to a national security summit two months ago on general danger.
The safety committee does not have the power to prescribe regulatory amendments. But before Tuesday's session, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was ready to assess the technical and economic feasibility of the need for airborne systems capable of warning pilots when their aircraft is descending to land on a taxiway.
"I'm optimistic that someone will jump on it" and implement a low-cost cockpit solution, Sumwalt said.
Some of the latest recommendations were rejected by the FAA years ago, but technical advances, such as laptops used to complement traditional cockpit systems, could give new impetus to some proposed changes.
The safety committee unanimously decided that the Air Canada incident was caused by a combination of fatigue in the cockpit – the captain had not slept 19 hours – and the members of the crew Other factors, according to the final report, were the inability of pilots to use an instrument landing system available as a safety system and inadequate Canadian government rules on pilot hours of service and rest periods. guarantees.
In one of the broadest recommendations, the NTSB has asked the FAA to reorganize and simplify federal warnings to alert all pilots of runway hazards, temporarily closed bands or other specific airport hazards.
Although they received such warnings about the condition of the San Francisco runways, the Air Canada pilots did not recognize the situation and were confused by the lights they saw.
-Andrew Tangel contributed to this article.
Write to Andy Pasztor at [email protected]
Published in the print edition of September 26, 2018 under the heading "Improvements of the security of the airlines".
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