Pilot fatigue cited in runway near miss

U.S. board seeks changes to safety regulations over 2017 Air Canada incident

OTTAWA— A U.S. safety agency is calling for improved rules for Canadian pilots to address fatigue following a near-disaster that saw an Air Canada jet almost land on a row of parked aircraft at San Francisco airport.

Air Canada Flight 759, an Airbus A320, was arriving from Toronto around midnight on July 7, 2017, when the pilots mistakenly lined up on a parallel taxiway, rather than the runway, narrowly missing four aircraft that were waiting to take off by just four to six metres.

“We could not have gotten … any closer to having a major disaster,” Bruce Landsberg, vice-chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a Washington hearing into the incident Monday.

The NTSB said that both pilots were tired — they were landing at 3 a.m. Toronto time — and ruled that fatigue played a role in the chain of events leading up to the near-accident.

The captain had been awake for more than 19 hours, which under American rules would have disqualified him from flying, the board said. The first officer had been up for more than 12 hours.

The pilots failed to tune an electronic navigational aid — known as the instrument landing system — that would have provided vital cockpit information that they were off-track.

They were slow to recognize the visual clues that they had lined up on a taxiway, rather than the active runway. That’s in part because the pilots were expecting to see two parallel runways, but since one was closed and unlit, their visual picture of the airport was confused.

The safety board took aim at Transport Canada regulations that allowed the Air Canada captain — who was on reserve duty at the time — to be at the controls despite his lack of sleep.

“For reserve pilots to be on duty for that long is just nuts,” Landsberg said.

The NTSB urged revisions to Transport Canada regulations to address fatigue for pilots on reserve duty who are called to operate evening flights.

That recommendation comes as debate is already raging in Canada over federal regulations that govern how long commercial pilots can be on duty.

Those rules haven’t been updated since 1996, raising concerns that Canada has fallen out of step with other countries in addressing pilot fatigue.

“There is a pervasive and systemic risk with Canadian aviation in particular, and that is fatigue,” said Matt Hogan, chair of the Air Canada Pilots Association.

Transport Canada said it would provide its formal response to the report within 90 days. It also said that it hopes to finalize new flight and duty time regulations for commercial pilots by year’s end.

While Transport Canada has proposed updated regulations, nothing has been enacted. And even the proposed new rules, if adopted, would lag behind other jurisdictions, Hogan said, adding that the proposals have been “watered down.”

Air Canada officials attended Monday’s hearing and will review the board’s final report, spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick said in an email.

“Safety is Air Canada’s top priority. The airline operates in a continuous improvement environment and will study the report and its recommendations,” he said, adding that it has already made changes to training and procedures.