Air Canada jet skirts ‘catastrophic’ collision

Pilot nearly lands on taxiway, barely evading ‘greatest aviation disaster in history’

Transportation authorities are investigating after an Air Canada pilot nearly landed a jet full of passengers on a taxiway where four other planes were waiting, coming within metres of what would have been a disastrous collision.

The incident took place late Friday night at San Francisco International Airport. According to a preliminary summary released Tuesday by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, the Air Canada jet was already over the taxiway on a landing approach when a crew member from another airline alerted air traffic control that it appeared to be on a collision course.

The Air Canada pilot pulled up, and overflew the first two planes by just 30 metres.

“If it is true, what happened probably came close to the greatest aviation disaster in history,” said retired United Airlines Capt. Ross Aimer, CEO of Aero Consulting Experts.

Pilots and aviation experts who spoke to the Star described the incident as rare, and said that consequences would have been severe if the pilot hadn’t changed course.

“Certainly the potential was there for something catastrophic to have happened,” said Greg McConnell, chairperson of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association.

Flight AC759 took off from Toronto at around 9:25 p.m. and, according to Air Canada, had 135 passengers and five crew members on board.

Just before midnight, the plane was cleared to land on a runway at the San Francisco airport.

But according to a statement from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the pilot “inadvertently” lined up for a taxiway that runs parallel to the runway instead — where there were four aircraft waiting to take off.

An air traffic controller sent the Airbus A320 around and the plane “landed without incident” on the second approach, the FAA said.

John Dejak, president of Aviotec International, an airport and aviation consultancy firm, questioned how any pilot could have mistaken the taxiway for the landing strip.

“I’m frankly baffled,” he said “It would be very difficult to confuse the lights of the taxiway to the lights of the runway.”

Runways are “lit up like a Christmas tree,” particularly at night, and look very different from taxiways, said Greg Feith, a former senior air safety investigator with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

In an email, Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick declined to identify the pilot or say how much flight experience he had. He declined to answer questions about whether the pilot has been removed from duty or if he was believed to have been at fault.

Keith Holloway, a spokesperson for the U.S. NTSB, said the agency is taking the lead on the investigation, with help from the FAA.

A spokesperson for the Canadian government’s Transportation Safety Board said the agency will facilitate information sharing between Air Canada and the U.S. investigators. With files from Star wire services