The US National Transportation Safety Board is investigating how an Air Canada Airbus A320 lined up to land on a busy taxiway at San Francisco International Airport on July 7.
A potential disaster was averted when an air traffic controller ordered the aircraft to abort the landing and go around.
The airport has two parallel runways with a taxiway running alongside runway 28R, the runway on which the Air Canada plane had been cleared to land. There were four aircraft on the taxiway.
Flight AC759 from Toronto with 135 passengers on board circled and landed safely after aborting the landing..
An audio recording has the Air Canada pilot telling a controller that he sees lights on the runway and a controller replying there are no other planes on 28R.
A voice is heard saying “Where’s this guy going, he’s on the taxiway” before the controller tells the Air Canada pilot to go around and the instruction is acknowledged.
A United Airline pilot tells air traffic control: “Air Canada flew directly over us.’’ The controller says: “Yeah I saw that guys’’.
Air Canada and the US Federal Aviation Administration are also investigating the incident.
The FAA described the incident as rare and said it was investigating how close the Air Canada flight came to the jets on the runway.
An aviation consultant and retired United Airlines captain, Ross Aimer, told the San Jose Mercury the error could have led to “the greatest aviation disaster in history’’.
“If you could imagine an Airbus colliding with four passenger aircraft wide bodies, full of fuel and passengers, then you can imagine how horrific this could have been,” he said.
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