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Horizon flight lands on taxiway instead of runway; FAA is investigating
About 3 miles from the airport, the crew positioned the aircraft for landing and attempted to activate the remote-controlled runway lights, said Horizon Air spokesman Ray Lane in an email. "The crew having not been informed of the non-operational runway lights, misidentified (the taxiway as the runway), lined up to it and safely landed," Lane said. (lmtribune.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Most of the Horizon fleet flying to Eastern WA is equipped with their "Fog Buster" technology. If so this would have shown the taxiway lights as two lines of heat spots which may have been confused as the runway lights since both would have normally been display as white on black spots. Since only the taxiway lights were lit, this may have been all that where visible on this equipment? Once one mentally decides that what they are seeing on a virtual display is what they expected to be seeing....landing on them, in this case the taxiway, may have been a foregone conclusion.
Click on more instead of newspaper link and it will give you the entire story.
Thanks!
Great! In order to read this entire article we have to submit to a payed subscription?
No, just the facts as they are.
OK, so the REIL's were inoperative. There are still runway centerline lights (white), versus green taxiway centerline and blue edge lights. And let us not forget about the runway markings. There are real big white boxes (150' x 50') called aiming points on either side of runway centerline. Plus you also have Landing Threshold markings for 3000 feet on each end of a precision approach runway. I do have to say this though, They did real good landing on a 75 feet wide pavement versus a 150 feet wide pavement, at night, with no edge lights.
Keep in mind that aircraft are required to have lighting for flight during night operations and that includes landing lights to illuminate the runway and taxiway.