Details on near miss at SFO are released
Preliminary findings and video footage released Wednesday by federal investigators revealed just how close an Air Canada passenger jet came to striking other planes at San Francisco International Airport in July when the pilot mistakenly descended over a taxiway parallel to the runway.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the landing Airbus A320, which had flown from Toronto with 135 passengers and five crew members aboard, came within 100 feet of the ground before being ordered to initiate a go-around and landing safely on the runway.
Four airplanes — two Boeing 787s, a Boeing 737 and an Airbus 340 — were on the taxiway awaiting clearance for takeoff, and the footage depicts a striking nearmiss.
The NTSB released hundreds of pages of reports about the July 7 incident, which happened just before midnight, but the agency has yet to determine a principle cause.
Interviews conducted by the agency revealed new details, including that a different airplane crew that landed on the same runway four minutes before the incident questioned if they were lined up at the correct runway, in part due to confusion over construction lighting.
The first officer on the Air Canada flight twice had tried to upgrade to captain but did not pass his qualifying evaluations, the NTSB said.
Fatigue was also explored, with the agency saying the pilot told investigators that a round trip to New York’s LaGuardia Airport the night before the incident “threw off his sleep cycle a little bit.”
“No conclusions about how or why the overflight occurred should be drawn from the information in the docket, as the investigation is ongoing,” the NTSB stated. “Analysis, findings, recommendations, and probable cause determinations related to the incident will be issued by the NTSB at a later date.”
The report said that at 11:55 p.m., the flight’s first officer verified that runway 28R was cleared for landing. Within seven seconds, an air traffic controller confirmed the plane was cleared to land there. Another seven seconds later, a voice from a United Airlines radio transmission is recorded saying, “Where is this guy going?” and “He’s on the taxiway.”
Within seconds, the air traffic controller tells the Air Canada crew to go around.
The first officer told investigators that during the descent, “it didn’t look right,” and he told the captain, “Go around, go around.” The captain said this occurred just as he was pulling up.
The first officer had two unsatisfactory evaluations in March 2017, when he was labeled by some involved in the process as a “nervous” and “weak candidate,” the NTSB said. The reports said the first officer’s performance had not met Canadian regulators’ standards for reasons that included a “lack of situational awareness.”
The captain had never had any accidents in his career, which consisted of roughly 20,000 hours of flying time, the NTSB said.
Doug Yakel, an airport spokesman, would not comment directly on the July incident. He said in a statement that “SFO has a safety culture” and noted improvements to runway lighting and other systems used as aids by pilots.
Last week, Yakel said, the Federal Aviation Administration re-certified the airport in its annual safety inspection — a weeklong review of all airport operations, procedures, training and documentation.