Maybe if they’d had different coloured lights…
Or numbers and markings specific to runways. I still remember one of my first flights after getting a license I was on a what should have been a very long final to a commercial airport. It was extremely hazy and the sun was in my eyes. I called “airport in sight” and proceeded on. I was wondering why the Directional Gyro had precessed so much and then I started looking at the airport. One of the runways was missing. It was a nearby military base. It wasn’t much of a course correction but DOHHH. God bless ipad GPS software.
That reminds of the incident where a commercial flight mistakenly landed at a military base instead of the nearby airport it was supposed to land at – I think it was Rapid City, SD, but instead landed at Ellsworth AFB. Since it was just a few years after 9/11, there were a bunch of people in the comments section insisting that the plane should have been shot down the instant it became evident it was lined up with the wrong runway.
We were in the flying club at CFB Namao (a closed military base) when a C-172 from another flight school called in for a touch-and-go. The controllers must have figured ‘what the hell’ and let him touch and go. Then the pilot calls for another one and joins the downwind leg. They let him. Then he asks for ANOTHER one, and the controller says, “Charlie Foxtrot XXX, what are your intentions after this one?” The guy says he might do another one or two.
The controller responds, “Okay, I was just asking because your landing fees are adding up quickly.” I can’t remember how much he told the guy, but it was quite a bit. Hundreds or low thousands of bucks.
Comes a plaintive cry on the radio, “That was my last one!”
We all started laughing hysterically as the controller explained to him that there were no landing fees, but he was doing circuits on a closed military base without prior permission and would he please read his Canada Flight Supplement more carefully next time.
I seem to recall a Delta 767 landing on a taxiway at ATL in 2009 or so. A Delta check pilot was in command, landing at his home airport. How could something like this happen? The pilot’s statement was that the taxiway lights looked white.
Wtihin a couple of weeks, the FAA did a few flight checks at the same time of morning shooting the same approach. Sure enough, the (at the time) new LED blue edge lights were white when viewed from above.
As much as we do to make flying the safest form of transportation on the planet, every so often a monkey wrench shows up in the gears.
I hate getting small details wrong. I should have known from my days as an amateur pilot pissing around in a Piper Cherokee that the sequence is always that tower/ATC states the aircraft call sign first, and the pilot responds by repeating the instruction followed by the call sign, or sometimes, just the call sign.
So the actual cool-as-a-cucumber sequence went like this:
Tower: Air Canada 759, go around.
ACA759: Going around, Air Canada 759.
Actual video and voice in the first few seconds here:
Not quite. The crew decided to go around on their own a few seconds before the tower said anything. By the time the tower was talking they were already climbing with the flaps & gear in transit.
You might want to read at least the summary of the report.
The Delta 737 that landed just before them didn’t make the same mistake, but had the same concern and visual confusion about identifying what was what. Their advantage was the fact that 28L was closed was top-of-mind for them, but was not for the incident pilots. It was only at 300 feet above the runway that the Delta pilots could see the painted markings. That’s about typical at night. And is about 15-20 seconds from touchdown or 10-15 seconds from hitting a taxiing airplane.
With modern LED airport lighting, the formerly rather dim, very blue taxiway lights are now brighter whitish-blue. While the formerly rather bright, very amber runway lights are now very bright bluish-white. They are not easy to tell apart from a distance. And most of the taxiway lights would have been obscured by the aircraft sitting on the taxiway.
All this stuff sounds easy. It is … until suddenly it isn’t.
If you’re confused then turn the lights up. Only the runway lights are variable and the brightest setting will have strobes on the end. That’s how I found a runway once in a pouring rain.
None of which is applicable to air carrier runways with an active control tower.
I too have used multi-step pilot-controlled lighting at minor airfields after midnight when ATC had long gone to bed and we were running late. Maybe the runway will have REILs and maybe it won’t. Runway equippage varies all over the place.
Are taxiway lights easier to see when you are sitting up high in a jet? I landed a small plane at Calgary International one night, and even though I studied the taxiway diagrams carefully before going, once on the ground all I could see from my low vantage was a sea of lit dots with no really discernable pattern. I asked the ground controller for instructions, and he happily gave me turn-by-turn directions to the FOB. But without that it would have been at best nerve wracking.
Have any of you who fly the big stuff also flown really small airplanes into big airports at night? If so, do you find it harder to see taxiways at night from the smaller plane? Or was I just inexperienced? That was I think my first night flight into large comolex airport I wasn’t familiar with.
I’ve asked towers to turn the lights up on specific runways and I’ve heard commercial pilots ask the same thing. I’ve seen it done on active military bases so it can’t be that uncommon a request.
It’s definitely easier sitting up higher.
I have flown light planes into at least a couple large airports at night. The sea of lights can be really bewildering if most of your lightplane flying has been at small airports. Big airport taxiways are also a lot wider than are typical at GenAV fields, so the lights are a lot farther off to the side that you might be used to.
The hot set-up nowadays is our iPad has a taxi diagram on it and has ownship position displayed. You can’t really taxi staring at it, but for the “Am I sure I’m really here, and do I want to turn left 45 or 90 degrees just ahead?” questions it’s really, really handy.
I went from a Garmin 395 handheld to an iPad with Garmin software. I know its a massive massive improvement but I thought the greatest thing EVER was to extend the runways out. You’re locked onto the centerline of the runway before you see it. I use to have to program that into the 395 if I was going to some obscure grass strip in order to find it. It was a PITA but worth the effort when you’re landing next to a farm field and the grass strip is the same color as the crops on either side of it.
I found that big airports with runways/taxiways crossing each other at odd angles turn into a sea of lights when you’re low to the ground.
And something a lot of people don’t understand about LED lights. They appear to move left and right if you wear glasses and move your head back and forth. Car headlights coming toward me look like the light is floating outside of the car.
The key is to watch for the edge lights on your desired taxiway to align. As you roll out on the runway or come off of the ramp, the sea of blue suddenly aligns into a black strip with blue edge lights. If you overshoot, the black strip just as quickly turns back into the ocean. Same thing if you need to turn from one taxiway to another - pass the direction sign and watch for the alignment of the edge lights.
Centerline lights sure make a difference if you have them, but you have to try to align the angles that the centerlines pare off at with the angles of the arrows on the direction sign you just passed.
Airports with surface painted directional signs adjacent to the centerline are the best.
My rule was that if I was even remotely confused, to let the ground controller know and ask for help. I would rather look like a noob to the controllers on the radio than act like one and taxi across an active runway or onto the wrong taxiway.
The same is true when flying. If you are uncomfortable, not sure where you are, having a hrd time spotting the airport or whatever, ASK. Too many private pilots are scared of looking foolish or are intimidated by the radio to ask for help that would keep them out of trouble.
The first time I flew into Denver International there were thunderstorms about and they started firing rerouting info at me and I just said, ‘I’m sorry, I am unfamiliar with the area’ and their tone changed immediately and they gave me very clear directions (“Continue on your current heading, and I’ll tell you when to make a left turn”, etc). They’d much rather help you now than have to deal with an emergency in a while or have you crash through some airspace you shouldn’t be in.
Your response would make a great video.
And Japanese, South Korean, Singaporean, Emirates and Qatar airlines, too…?
I’ll take your word for it. From the video in my post just before yours, it looks to me as if the Air Canada plane starts climbing immediately after the instruction from the tower. But I could be not seeing it correctly or maybe the audio isn’t in sync. I can’t see anything in the NTSB report confirming one or the other.
I haven’t flown since the early '90s, but I remember wondering at the time exactly where I was supposed to get a diagram of a large airport. I had to have a sectional chart, of course, and there was a text directory of info for all the local airports. As a private, VFR pilot, I don’t remember any official source for taxiway diagrams.
I only would have needed one once, departing Everett at night. It was the classic sea of blue lights, and I got progressive taxi instructions from the tower. After that it was great; a clear night and a tailwind to Tacoma. Might have been the best flight I ever had.