Musings of a Technonerd

Much is being made lately of the use of the wrong runway, or, in the most recent case in Newark New Jersey, mistaking a Taxiway for a runway.

First, this previous August, there was the case in Lexington Kentucky where a regional jet lined up on the wrong runway that was too short for the plane. The resulting crash killed 49 people. More recently, a Continental 757 lined up on the right heading, but landed on the taxiway next TO the runway instead. The next Monday, an Alaska Airways 737 used the wrong runway to take off.

My good friend, The Unhappy American asked me to write something about this a while back. In fact, he asked me so long ago, he probably thinks I've blown him off and forgotten about it. But I haven't. I've been going over and over this in my mind, and I just keep coming back to one inescapable conclusion:
The Pilot-In-Command is just that. Whether he/she is flying solo, or flying with a co-pilot, they are STILL the ones with the final responsibility for the aircraft. They are is STILL the ones with the ultimate responsibility for making sure the correct runway gets used, and to KEEP the damn aircraft OFF the runway iffen he/she's not supposed to be there. No one else is gonna do it for them. Not the people in the tower, the passengers in the back, mechanic in the hanger, not even the poor shmuck who has to empty the crapper. Even HE can't do it. Nope,the onus is on the PIC and the PIC alone. As complicated as aviation has become, it is still as simple as that.

There are ways for pilots to check if they're on the right runway.
First off, there's the runway itself. As you can see below, it's plainly marked with the number.




You can see it from the air as you approach during daylight landings. It's supposed to be painted, legibly, on all runways. If it's not, the airport is out of compliance. It's a little tougher to see from the cockpit during takeoffs unless you're driving a 747 or one of the other big boys. That number is the magnetic heading of the runway in degrees. And that's a key thing here. If they're taking off, they look at their gyro compass before they advance throttles, and if the number on that compass doesn't agree with what you assigned by the tower, well then you step back, take a minute and go over things to make sure you're not screwing up. If the pilots in Kentucky had done that one last simple step, that wreck might not have happened. Also, at most airports, there are signs next to the taxiways, and at the entrance to the runway that tell you where you are. Everything is color coded, including the lights, and all the taxiways and runways are labeled and numbered, with centerline stripes to show where to put the nose wheel. Here's an airport diagram for Wold Chamberlain Field in the Twin Cities.


Many times, things like this happen because the pilots were distracted by other problems, focusing on checklists, tending to a piece of equipment, dealing with an upset passenger or distracted in some way. Get-there-itis is something I was taught about when I was taking my flying lessons. It's something that can happen to anyone who's tired, in a hurry, trying to beat a storm, running behind schedule, the list goes on and on. The Kentucky pilots, if my memory serves correctly, were running behind schedule, and may have been rushing through checklists they might normally do while stationary to save time. Don't know for sure. We'll probably find out in about another 5 or 6 months.

What to do? Well, the sad fact is that until we take the pilots out of the cockpit and replace them with computers, not much. People are human, and people make mistake. To err is human, or something like that. Aircraft cockpits, especially modern airliners, are more complex than ever before. They're filled with flat panel glass displays, radio equipment that can damn near talk with Beelzebub himself, engineering equipment for aircraft systems such as hydraulics, electronics, air conditioning, radars, collision avoidance systems, both air and ground..... Well, I think you get the idea. Once a good friend of mine who was a senior Boeing 777 pilot told me that about the only thing that plane wouldn't do is shake his pecker for him after he peed. Now there's talk about adding yet another device to warn about being on the wrong runway. I don't know. I think there comes a point of diminishing returns for stuff like that. There's enough crap in the cabin already to distract the pilots, I think. It's just one more piece of equipment to screw and fiddle with when you should be paying attention to what's going on.

And that's really the point here. I'll end by recounting one principle drilled into me by my flight instructor. I got distracted by the radio one day while practicing approaches at an uncontrolled airport. He reached over, yanked the mic out of my hand and put it back on the hook and silently pointed at the runway. Message received. Later, on the ground, he looked me right in the eye, and told me in no uncertain terms, "From now on, above EVERYTHING else, FLY THE DAMN AIRPLANE!" That lesson stuck with me.


"The sky, to an even greater extent than the sea, is terribly unforgiving of errors. "-- Old Aviation Saying