An Alaska Airlines passenger jet landed on Seattle-Tacoma International Airport’s central taxiway – not the runway – on Dec. 19, the fourth time a pilot has made the error in the history of the airport.
Nobody was hurt in the 8:33 a.m. incident, and the Boeing 737-900, Flight 27 from Chicago, brought all passengers to the terminal without issue.
“It landed safely and taxied to the gate,” said Port of Seattle spokesman Perry Cooper. “Most likely the passengers on board had no idea they landed on a taxiway.”
Both Alaska Airlines (NYSE: ALK) and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident, but neither spokesmen for the organizations would elaborate on what happened or whether any actions, if any, have been taken since.
Taxiways are essentially roads that pilots use to drive aircraft between the terminal and their points for takeoff and landing. Some Sea-Tac taxiways cross the runways, while others, such as the one taxiway where Flight 27 landed, run parallel to the runways.
Landing on a taxiway is dangerous. It could cause a collision with aircraft already on the taxiway or about to cross it.
The taxiway crossings have the equivalent of stop signs, and aircraft can’t proceed without an OK from air traffic controllers, but if a plane were already half-way across when another was coming in to land, it could result in a collision.
The Dec. 19 incident happened just days after workers finished paving Sea-Tac’s central runway, which may have led to the pilot’s confusion.
The runway and taxiway are the same length – about 9,400 feet – and are only 600 feet apart. The newly paved center runway would not yet have accumulated the dark tire marks characteristic of a heavily used runway, and so the light-colored concrete may have looked similar on both.
The weather was clear on Dec. 19, so the pilot might have been using a visual approach as opposed to using instruments, Cooper said, but he was not sure that was the case.
Pilot mistakes over Sea-Tac’s center taxiway, called “Tango” in aircraft control lingo, have caused years of debate between the National Transportation Safety Board, Sea-Tac officials and the FAA, according to a 2005 Seattle Times story.
“This is a pretty rare thing. These are very well marked,” Cooper said. “There’s a real distinction between taxiway and runway because of markings.”
But some of the complications are caused by the fact that pilots often approach from the north, which means that the surface can be obscured from sunlight from the south. In addition, when the runway is wet – as it often is in rainy Seattle – any runway markings can be hard to see.
The last time a jet actually landed on the taxiway– and the pilot didn’t pull up just before landing after realizing his or her mistake – was in 2004, when a propeller-driven Dash 8, flown by Air Canada unit Jazz landed with 32 passengers on board. No one was injured, but the NTSB investigated and recommended the airport mark the taxiway with a giant “T” so pilots could see it when they came in for a landing.
Since then the airport has added a third runway, which changed the NTSB’s assessment.
Puget Sound Business Journal
Sea-Tac gets buses for passengers
The Seattle area’s primary airport is running out of gates, so you may have to take a bus to your next flight.
As Seattle-Tacoma International Airport copes with meteoric growth— with the September passenger count up 13.6 percent compared to just a year ago — it’s being forced to put people on buses to get out to their jets.
At peak hours, there just aren’t enough covered walkways, said Mark Reis, managing director of the aviation division for the Port of Seattle.
“The growth has been so explosive, so fast, that we have not been able to build fast enough to accommodate,” he said. “We have to bus people to remote gates next year.”
Few airports in the United States bus people to aircraft, because usually there are enough covered walkways available. But it’s common in Asia, for instance, for buses to bring passengers out to their planes at overcrowded airports.
The port’s decision about which airlines’ passengers will have to board buses is generating what Reis called, during an interview Thursday, “a pretty intense conversion.”
He said he had just emerged from a meeting with airlines, none of which are happy with the prospect of putting their passengers on buses, especially in rainy Seattle.
“It’s a very complex thing; we’re breaking new ground here — not many U.S. airports do this,” he said.
The solution, he said, will be to play no favorites.
“We want to create a completely objective, known, transparent process so everyone knows the rules,” he said. “When an airplane comes in, we’re just following the rules and not picking winners and losers.”
Anticipating the problem, port officials 18 months ago decided to purchase three special buses, and it’s been testing how to use them.
The airport also has added a truck, with a lift, to meet American with Disabilities Act requirements. The truck can lift passengers up to the flight deck from the ground, if those people can’t climb stairs.
Reis hastens that this is only a short-term fix, until the port builds eight new gates now finalized, and another 35 more being planned.
“It’s nothing we want to do forever,” Reis said. “This is a crisis management undertaking.”
Puget Sound Business Journal
Sea-Tac can’t handle the A380 Emirates wants to send
As Emirates airlines grows its volume of passengers through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, bringing in a mammoth Airbus A380 would be the logical next step.
Except Sea-Tac can’t fit the 262-foot wingspan of the twin-deck A380 and still maintain regular operations.
The issue is FAA rules that dictate required separation between aircraft, said Sea-Tac spokesman Perry Cooper. While the airport can handle the 225-foot wingspan of Boeing (NYSE: BA) 747-8 jets, the extra 37 feet of an A380 puts that jet in another category.
“At this point we don’t have anything in master planning to accommodate that, because of separation rules,” Cooper said.
While the high-volume airport technically could manage an emergency A380 landing, and even has provided for that possibility, the configuration wouldn’t work for regular service.
“If they were to land on the nearest runway,” he said, “the taxiway next it would be to be shut off, and nobody would be able to operate until that aircraft would go through.”
That’s too bad, because Emirates Vice President of U.S. Sales Matthias Schmid said in an interview this week that as the Dubai-based airline grows in Seattle, graduating to an A380 on one of the twice-daily flights might be the logical next step.
“It is no secret,” he said. “Our president Tim Clark already has mentioned one day looking at full A380 operations to all of our U.S. gateways.”
Emirates now flies the 550-passenger A380 into five U.S. gateways – San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and New York – and hopes to add Chicago and Boston.
The A380 is one of the two mainstays of the Emirates fleet. The Boeing 777 is the other, and Emirates balances which jet it uses with where demand is greatest.
Currently Emirates operates a 290-passenger 777-200ER and a 364-passenger 777-300ER jet for the two daily flights between Sea-Tac and Dubai, the second of which started in July. After it upgrades the 200ER, a A380 would be the next way to grow.
Additional growth also would benefit SeaTac-based Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK), which supplies connecting flights for about a third of each Emirates flight.
While Sea-Tac would be happy to welcome A380s, there’s no way to grow at the current Sea-Tac site to accommodate them, Cooper said.
The 1,500-acre airport is one of the most high-density in the United States, and the positioning of the three runways, and the taxiways, are dictated by the narrow site.
“We’d love to if we had more space for the airfield,” Cooper said. “But we have to be considerate of the three cities we’re around, and we’re not looking to expand beyond three-runway configuration.”
Puget Sound Business Journal