Harrison Ford and Joe Biden are the same age. Just sayin'...

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Tenerife was the result of multiple factors; an island location with a significantly elevated traffic density due to a bomb threat at Las Palmas, low weather in fog, no surveillance radar, and in particular, an authoritarian captain who would not listen to his first officer (and a first officer who was not assertive enough).

Yes, yes Dr. Guppy, of course there were other factors, but cut out the link of them being on the same piece of concrete and voila, the error chain breaks and no accident. All that other stuff is beside the point when talking specifically about the danger of a runway incursion, which is the point I was making.

And as you to your point that accidentally landing on a taxiway is a common occurrence. Well let's just say I disagree. It does happen. But daily occurrence? I'm game enough to admit I'm wrong, but I'll need to see the stats. And no, it isn't up to me to research your assertion, should you feel like defending it.

From March 2015 ...

... 20 mins after takeoff, engine power failure.



1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR

source link

Years of piloting prowess? 3 seconds to decide.

Sure, there is the age old adage of "any crash you can walk away from", but there is also "if the plane is still usable after ..."

Harrison has done good things while piloting, there is that.

quote:

Originally posted by cjevans:

Sure, there is the age old adage of "any crash you can walk away from", but there is also "if the plane is still usable after ..."

How many feet was his landing space? We are talking about a golf course with trees everywhere.

Here's another view of the crash site.



(source: abc7.com)

I do not see much room to land an airplane in that picture. He's blessed to have walked away from that one.

A PT-22 needs 980 feet of paved surface over a 50ft obstacle.

Hope he filled in his divot

quote:

Originally posted by cjevans:

Here's another view of the crash site.

It's a good thing he was able to dodge that yellow police tape.

quote:

Originally posted by Otto Pilot:

quote:

Originally posted by Russ59:
...
Would this be akin to walking down range to fix/replace your target on an active range?

More like making your left turn in your car too tight and pulling into oncoming traffic while the light is red.

In your range analogy, only one person will likely be a casualty. Crossing an active runway means everyone could die. The biggest aviation accident in history happened with 2 747's on a foggy day occupying the same runway in Tenerife.

I remember that matter. My stat prof was an aviation enthusiast, we analyzed each step, and the probability of it happening. I don't remember the conclusion

Everybody seems awfully hard on Ford. I seem to hear many stories of pilots missing the entire airport. Wasn’t there a USAF C17 that landed at a muni down in Florida? You’d think landing a large plane at an airport without a control tower would come with severe repercussions. I even remember my brother (Delta flyer) telling me of a plane that missed (or almost missed, can’t remember) their city by hundreds of miles, somewhere over in Europe. They didn’t realize it until the FE kept telling the pilots that they were 900 pounds heavy fuel. Something like that. Must be fairly easy to do, apparently.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

I seem to hear many stories of pilots missing the entire airport.

I have another True Story, but before I tell it, I have to check the statute of limitations.

The guy is too damn old (Ford). He’s flying into and out of airports that are busy and not some airport out in the sticks that has only G.A. and/or very few operations. Obviously people older than him are still flying and not endangering lives, but he’s losing his faculties with his latest mistake and the one where he almost hit an airliner and ended up landing on the taxiway. Of course if he does end up killing himself or someone else, no gov’t bureaucrat is going to lose his/her job over it.

And I’m one of those people that thinks airline pilots shouldn’t be forced to retire just because they’re 65 years old.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

I seem to hear many stories of pilots missing the entire airport.

I have another True Story, but before I tell it, I have to check the statute of limitations.

The FAA won't yank his license because he's HOLLYWOOD. He will kill himself flying, but hopefully he won't kill someone else on his way out. Can't think of a better way to go, but not at the expense of others.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
Must be fairly easy to do, apparently.

Nah, it isn't easy to do - but like all professions, there has to be a 'bottom of the barrel, but still made the minimum passing grade (somehow)' - and eventually 2 of those morons end up in the same plane together and eventually do some incredibly stupid shit...

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:

The FAA won't yank his license because he's HOLLYWOOD. He will kill himself flying, but hopefully he won't kill someone else on his way out. Can't think of a better way to go, but not at the expense of others.

It's not just a "yank." There is a process.

Celebrity status does not impart a free pass. Bob Hoover, for example. Incredibly talented pilot, one of the best, and the FAA grounded him.

An associate landed a company learjet on a closed runway some years ago. Not just the runway, but the airport. He was delivering a kidney, and medical transport personnel were waiting. The problem was that they understood the airport had closed, and went to a nearby airport. The associate did not, so when he landed on the closed airport, he was unable to take off, and there was no one there to receive the organ. Dumb mistake? Yes.

I arrived at a "fixed base operator" with a medical patient on board a Learjet, to find no ambulance. The airport had two FBO's marked "Executive Terminal." Guess where the ambulance was waiting. Not the one where I was parked...a place which quickly parked a fuel truck in front and refused to move it, until I paid a parking fee.

I took off with a load of HALO military jumpers on a training flight, and became aware of a very small, very hard to see airplane on the runway, in front of me, going opposite direction. No radio calls (turned out to be a problem with my radio). No distance remaining to reject the takeoff, not fast enough to climb, and I didn't know if he was taking off or rejecting. No performance to go right and obstacles to the right, so I went left, departed the runway as I rotated, cleared a fence, and climbed. The little airplane was an RV4 painted checkerboard colors that completely broke up its outline, and it wasn't visible until it turned on a light. Could have been very sesrious.

I've gone around, meaning rejected landings, on numerous occasions due to aircraft entering the runway, attempting to take off, etc, or crossing the runway, or not getting off the runway.

I've landed on taxiways, roads, and at various airports where the parallel taxiway IS a former runway. A few years ago after two attempts to land a single engine air tanker (SEAT) on a two runways in high winds and unable to get on the ground due to crosswinds, I landed on the taxiway. It was safer. It's not the first time.

John Wayne (Santa Ana) airport in Orange County has two parallel runways which are not mistaken for one another; one is five thousand feet and one is two thousand feet long. The shorter runway, however, looks more like a taxiway, and I've seen quite a few airports at which the taxiway is in much better shape, and the runway more faded and harder to spot, where pilots routinely line up on the taxiway, thinking it's the runway.

Seatac, Seattle's main airport, had an issue with aircraft using the parallel taxiway near runway 16C, by mistake. With three parallel runways and one full length parallel taxiway, several (five) airline flights have mistakenly used Taxiway Tango, in error, instead of the runway. Five times, airline pilots have landed on Tango, and numerous times, lined up for it by mistake and either sidestepped or executed a go-around.

The FAA's Engineering Brief 72A talks about factors tied to unintended taxiway landings. It's all about the topic, in fact, and references the FAA's commissioned report DOT/FAA/AR-TN07/54, titled "Identification Techniques to Reduce Confusion Between Taxiways and Adjacent Runways. Again, NOT a new problem by a long shot.

https://www.faa.gov/airports/e...efs/media/EB-72a.pdf

I was on a demonstration fire for US and Canadian officials many years ago, involving US and Canadian air tankers. We had a series of items burning that we were supposed to hit with retardant. The area was away from the local population, open sections of ground with section lines; one mile square. We lined up and dropped on the target and returned to the airport to reload. The Canadian aircraft lined up on a target one section line over: a mile away, and dropped on that, by mistake. Think about that. A professional crew that does that for a living.

Some years ago I picked up a fire in Montana with a leadplane. The lead gave us a brief; heavy smoke, low visibility throughout the area. He'd been on multiple runs, knew the run-in and target well. We'd see a road, stay on the road, it went left. We'd see a rock wall, and a rock gate. Start the retardant there and carry it out parallel to the road, don't go past the fork, break hard left, he'd go straight out. Seemed simple enough. We formed up, picked up the road and made our run. I saw the targets as described, hit the gate, and punched off the load, eight doors. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. My copilot, wide eyed, shouted "what the hell was that?"

We broke out of the smoke to a clearer spot. There was another road, rock wall, rock gate, and...the fireline. Fuck me.

Think it doesn't happen? Just aging actors? Hah. Yeah. Just them. The rest of us...never make mistakes.

Perhaps Ford hasn't been told that a man his age having sex with a younger woman can be dangerous?

Real men fly long e Zee's

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
The FAA won't yank his license because he's HOLLYWOOD. He will kill himself flying, but hopefully he won't kill someone else on his way out. Can't think of a better way to go, but not at the expense of others.

You mean like they didn’t yank Bob Hoover’s (medical certificate) license? Oh, wait...