Some Unwelcome Spontaneity

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo: JAL plane attempted to take off without controller's approval
A Japan Airlines aircraft attempted to take off without approval from air traffic control at an airport in Hokkaido on Jan 22, the airline and other sources said Tuesday. JAL did not report the incident to the authorities for nearly a month. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport reprimanded the company last week for failing to report the incident.

[samuraiwig]

Top title Mulboyne

[Mulboyne]

It has happened again at the same airport:

Yomiuri: Close shave at Chitose airport

The close shave at Hokkaido's New Chitose Airport on Saturday in which a Japan Airlines jumbo jet nearly rear-ended another plane on the runway occurred despite a JAL operations manual that stipulates the captain and copilot must confirm with each other air traffic control instructions on landing, taking off or entering runways. The operations manual included this stipulation after a similar incident in January 2005 in which a JAL plane started taking off without permission at the same airport when visibility was poor because of driving snow. Saturday's near miss has prompted aviation industry experts to wonder why the airline repeated the same mistake.

An air traffic controller instructed Flight 502--a Boeing 747-400 bound for Tokyo's Haneda Airport with 446 passengers and crew aboard--to enter the runway and wait for instructions to take off at about 10:30 a.m. "Prepare for immediate takeoff. An aircraft has just landed and is on the runway," the controller told the pilot. "There's a plane behind you at a distance of 10 kilometers making its final landing approach." The pilot responded by saying, "Roger." The pilot then applied full thrust and started the plane's takeoff run. A controller told the pilot to abort the takeoff immediately after noticing on the ground surveillance radar it had started its takeoff run without permission.

Flight 502 made an emergency stop and came to a halt about 1,800 meters behind another JAL passenger jet--Flight 2503, an MD-90 with 126 passengers and crew--that had just arrived from Kansai Airport. Visibility at the time was about 500 meters, and it appears that the crew of the 747 was unable to see the MD-90. "I thought we had permission to take off," a crew member said, explaining why the plane began its takeoff without authorization. Mishearing instructions from the control tower is a possible cause of the near-miss. It is also possible that the heavy snow had delayed the plane far behind its scheduled departure time, the crew members were in a hurry to get the plane into the air.

The Construction and Transport Ministry has also instructed airlines and airports that, when necessary, crew members should repeat all instructions from air traffic control to confirm that they have understood them, but it has no rules concerning in what specific situations such confirmation should be made. "The method of confirmation and other matters need to be clarified," a ministry spokesman said.

Meanwhile, some passengers expressed anger that JAL kept them in the dark about the incident. One passenger said the captain made a short announcement that air traffic control had instructed him not to take off. A crew member then announced that the plane would return temporarily to the parking apron. But the plane could not depart because of the heavy snow, and the flight was eventually canceled just after 2 p.m. Passengers on the flight later left for Haneda on a different aircraft. "As well as being confined inside the airplane like a sardine, I missed my scheduled connection," one passenger said. "No explanation was given about the incident."

[succubusqueen]

I hope this type of spontaneity is not common in other countries...

[kurohinge1]

I hope this type of spontaneity is not common in other countries...

Sadly, it is not unique to Japan, and the incident that immediately sprang to my mind was the KLM /Pan Am collision at Tenerife (Los Rodeos) in 1977:

The Tenerife collision took place on March 27, 1977, at 17:06:56 local time (also UTC), when two Boeing 747 airliners collided at Los Rodeos (TCI) on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, killing 583 people. The accident has the highest number of fatalities (excluding ground fatalities) of any single accident in aviation history. It occurred as a result of a synchronicity of a chain of events, any one of which having not transpired would have prevented the accident.

The aircraft involved were Pan American World Airways Flight 1736, named Clipper Victor, under the command of Captain Victor Grubbs, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 4805, named Rijn (Rhine River), under the command of Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten. KLM 4805, taking off on the only runway of the airport, crashed into the Pan Am aircraft which was taxiing in the opposite direction on the same runway . . . more

I think confirming instructions from the tower (to show you heard & understood them) should always happen, but especially when visibility is limited.

[Mulboyne]

The Asahi (Japanese) reports another incident, this time involving an Asiana Airlines plane at Kyushu airport.