Harrison Ford LOL

[RotorWash]

Shouldn't laugh really ?

https://youtu.be/87i_eruc-uU

[Ian Warren]

Were is the Falcon again ....... chewie !

[bobsk8]

He wasn't the first and won't be last pilot to do that.

[dvm]

Flying in and out of the LA basin and surrounding area for fun sounds more like work to me. The whole area is an accident waiting to happen in my opinion no matter how good you are. I'll take a uncontrolled airport in the boonies any day.

[bobsk8]

Flying in and out of the LA basin and surrounding area for fun sounds like work to me. The whole area is an accident waiting to happen in my opinion no matter how good you are. I'll take a uncontrolled airport in the boonies any day.

Problem with uncontrolled airports is there is always some morons that will enter the traffic pattern from all kinds of crazy angles and altitudes and not both announcing who and where they are on Unicomm. Just had a CFII and student killed in a mid air at a local airport a few months ago by some jerk that did just that.

[n421nj]

Very lucky. Maybe hes getting too old to be flying.

[Paul K]

I saw it almost happen at RAF Alconbury, when a USAF C-130 descended out of the murk, heading for the south parallel taxi way. Instead of aborting and going around, the pilot banked the huge aircraft at a horrifying angle, and managed to get it down on the main runway. It was frightening to watch, particularly from such a close distance as I was.

[DHenriques_]

Flying in and out of the LA basin and surrounding area for fun sounds like work to me. The whole area is an accident waiting to happen in my opinion no matter how good you are. I'll take a uncontrolled airport in the boonies any day.

Problem with uncontrolled airports is there is always some morons that will enter the traffic pattern from all kinds of crazy angles and altitudes and not both announcing who and where they are on Unicomm. Just had a CFII and student killed in a mid air at a local airport a few months ago by some jerk that did just that.

There's a hidden safety message in your post that I talk about frequently on the safety circuit. When flying into and out of uncontrolled airports, YOU are responsible for your own safety. There can be 20 "idiots" or "jerks" in the air all coming into the pattern from different directions unannounced.. It doesn't matter. It's up to YOU as PIC of your OWN aircraft to see and avoid them.
Sounds cruel I know, but it makes a strong safety point. YOU are responsible for avoiding the idiots in the air with you.
There are several factors that absolutely GLARE out at me as a safety consultant when pilots mistakenly land on a taxiway at a controlled field. The first question that ALWAYS arises with me is that during the initial ATC exchange a pilot accepts a landing clearance VERBALLY to a specific runway. That runway has a number. Taxiways do NOT have runway markings. This means that any pilot landing on a taxiway has to line up on it.........fly the approach to it.........totally neglect the fact that there are no corresponding numbers on it more or less a number that matches the acknowledged approach.....then commit the aircraft to land flying over the end of the unmarked taxiway.

Dudley Henriques

[Oracle427]

It couldn't be clearer! I remember one time were a pilot was in the pattern announcing left downwind traffic for the runway and he was ahead of me as I was on the 45 for left traffic. I kept looking for him and couldn't find him where expected. I inquired and kept looking around and spotted him on the opposite side of the airport making right traffic.

The whole time I was looking for him, I missed spotting the banner tow that was at pattern altitude, crossing through base/downwind directly in front of me and heading in my direction. That aircraft was not making any announcements at all. I had to turn and descend to give clearance to that one.

So always be on the lookout for your own safety and that of others!

[AKar]

I was actually once forced to be one of those not giving any announcements myself!

I think it was like my fourth solo, or something like that, taking a practice flight in immediate vicinity of the airfield. It soon became clear on me, that my radio had stopped transmitting except the carrier, it only received. (The log had a note of "an intermittent radio issue", and I happened to have some engineering education on radios, so that was more like an easily determined issue to deal with later on when compared to actual flying.)

Right when I took my nose to return into the pattern, I heard a light aircraft, I think some ultralight/LSA, announcing the pattern pretty much about when I though I'd be on the base.

Now, the issue was that I was in glider, and there was no weather or altitude to keep me up for any longer. That's why I was turning to return. Plus I had not much more but single-figure hours on my belt, so even if there was some weather, I was hardly using it to any advantage.

I didn't know whether he was already in the pattern or not, actually, I was suspecting he was joining the base directly. The evening lightning was against me as well, so instead of using the airbrakes on the glide, I made slight S-turns ... I didn't see much against bright low clouds and deep shadows, but I hoped that I'd spot him by one, or that he would spot a flash from reflection, me coming with sun at about my 7...8 o'clock. A stupid chance, I understand, but it felt like an idea. In reality, I perhaps just made a bigger target.

Right when I joined downwind, and having committed to land basically, I heard the other pilot announce to be on base in a minute (or something like that, I don't remember exactly). As I still didn't know where the other guy was (even if he was doing rather constant announcements), I kept on doing what I've had been doing: repeatedly clicking the tangent whenever a response was expected on the channel...I admit even blowing on the mike in an attempt if some of that crackle got thorough!

For the luck of mine, the ground guys with aerial hand-radios (I was not licensed and a student to be supervised from ground via radio), realized the developing situation from my constant clicking after each of the approaching airplane's transmission, and called out that there is glider training activity on the airfield. This announcement was enough to make the approaching motored airplane to abort their landing intentions (I don't remember if they were to touch and go or actually land) and continue on to wherever they were headed to.

I never spotted the other traffic.

Since then, I've always felt the landing patterns to be a specifically hazardous place. And we had like a total of two airplanes around the airfield.

-Esa

[batt]

Shouldn't laugh really ?

Nope. Definitely don't want to do that. Bout the time you get done laughing and believing you're Sky King; guess what?

Happens to the pros flying the big boys too. Here's an incident of an Alaska Airlines 737 landing on a taxiway at SeaTac little more than just a year ago:

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/bo ... t-sea-tac/

And a China Air A340 that chose to take off from a taxiway in Anchorage, Alaska in 2002:

http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=165957


My primary helicopter I.P. once said to me: "There are two kinds of pilots. Those who have stuck their tail rotor in the brush and those who are going to." And by extension: Those who have landed wheels up and those who are going to. Those who have landed on the taxiway and those who are going to .......and so on and so on.

[EnDSchultz]

Apparently SeaTac's taxiway Tango is such a problem, the Jeppesen charts for the airport have an entire plate dedicated to "Please please please don't land on Taxiway T. It is not a runway, it's a taxiway. Seriously, don't land on it. Please."

[Oracle427]

That picture makes it very hard for me to understand how Mr. Ford could have messed that landing up.

Assuming that he was absolutely convinced that the taxiway was a runway, everyone I've spoken to since don't understand why he would have landed with another aircraft on the "runway". Every student pilot knows that if the runway isn't clear, you go around!

[bobsk8]

That picture makes it very hard for me to understand how Mr. Ford could have messed that landing up.

Assuming that he was absolutely convinced that the taxiway was a runway, everyone I've spoken to since don't understand why he would have landed with another aircraft on the "runway". Every student pilot knows that if the runway isn't clear, you go around!

I looked at the airport photo too, and that taxiway is much narrower than the runway, and obviously has no runway markings, so how he made that mistake, and then failed to go around when things didn't look "right" shows very poor judgement in my opinion.

[TymK]

I agree it's one of those "what was he thinking" situations, but when you have a closer look at the photos of the airport, there's a possible explanation.


https://www.google.com/maps/@33.700231, ... a=!3m1!1e3

When you take into account the difference in size between 20L and 20R, it's possible that he got completely fixated on landing on the small one on the left instead of the big one on the right. If he went into a kind of a "tunnel vision" mode, he might've missed the "bigger picture" and gone straight for the narrower surface on the left.