V-e-r-y- Close !

[Kip Powick]

http://media.aopa.org/asf/0809runway/ABE091908_V3AOPA.html

Press "Play"

You might want to try it with the TEXT turned off and just listen....... to see what it was like....was anyone really listening to the traffic..... as well as eyeballing the traffic??

[J.O.]

The guy in the tower sounded more than a little shook up once he realized what had happened. They were very fortunate that it didn't turn out much worse. I'm assuming this happened at night, otherwise I would expect the RJ crew would have seen the light aircraft on the runway much sooner.

[handyman]

Pretty cool crew in the RJ. Good job avoiding a certain disaster!

[Check Pilot]

Thank goodness one (or both) of the guys was looking.!!!!!!!!!!!!

It might have mitigated a CRJ "flap" problem too )-:

[LWTwr]

All I can say is WOW.

It's one of those things you hope you never see. I heard a similar thing happened at YVR a few years back with a Cessna and a WestJet when the Cessna broke his H/S restriction and entered the runway after the '37 was already on the roll. Anyone know if that's true?

Cheers to the RJ crew.

Jeers to the FAA for short staffing all their units. Worthwhile to note that the FAA has lost 5000 controllers since 2001 and have gone from 16k nationwide down to just over 11k. It's becoming more and more dangerous every year. This is one of the Bush Administration horror stories the public doesn't get to hear about.

I would hazzard to guess it's going to take a tragedy or two before ANY attempt is made to correct the problem.

[canadairguy]

Another close one. C-GSUA is Suncor's CRJ 900

Incident: Hawkair DH8C at Fort MacKay on Jan 5th 2009, takeoff over backtracking aircraft

A Hawkair Aviation Services Dash 8-300 registration C-FIDL was about to take off runway 16 at the uncontrolled airfield of Fort MacKay, AB (Canada) during nighttime in blowing snow and visibility of 1.5 miles and held before the runway due to an arriving aircraft, a Corporate Canadair CL-600 registration C-GSUA. The crew of C-FIDL had talked to the airport operator and ensured, there was no other inbound aircraft.

G-SUA landed and was just turning around at the threshold of runway 34 to backtrack the runway, when C-FIDL taxied into position and began their takeoff roll. A radio call, that C-GSUA was still on the runway, came too late with C-FIDL already above decision speed V1, so that the crew continued their takeoff and climbed over the CL-600, which at that point was perpendicular to the runway.

Hawkair advised, that they are changing their operating procedures requiring crews to not taxi onto runways of uncontrolled airfields unless there are daytime VFR conditions or it has been confirmed, that all traffic has cleared the runway by communicating directly with possible conflicting aircraft.

[Kip Powick]

Hawkair advised, that they are changing their operating procedures requiring crews to not taxi onto runways of uncontrolled airfields unless there are daytime VFR conditions or it has been confirmed, that all traffic has cleared the runway by communicating directly with possible conflicting aircraft.

Dunno.....seems like it is common sense to confirm the runway is clear and if that was not in their SOPs ....well..

[J.O.]

Dunno.....seems like it is common sense to confirm the runway is clear and if that was not in their SOPs ....well..

The question we need to ask is why it made sense to them at the time. Did they wrongly assume that the Challenger was going to exit at the far end, even though an exit wasn't available? Proof positive that common sense isn't always as common as we'd like; and that if "it" can be done, sooner or later, it will be done.