"a" wrote in message
...
On Oct 21, 7:40 pm, "Peter Dohm" wrote:
"Ross" wrote in message

...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/21/geo...ion/index.html

Back to incursions.
--

Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
Sold
KSWI

Other than the runway and taxiway lights being in use, the article did
not
apear to mention the time of day, place of origin, or the number of hours
the crew had been or duty.

Y'all don't suppose that crew fatigue could have played a part?

Peter


Peter, it landed at 6:05 AM, it would have been quite dark, and the
flight was I think from Reo. I guess if there was a cross wind of,
say, 50 knots, if they were flying an ILS the nose could have been
pointing at the taxiway when they broke out (that is intended to be
funny -- this event was not).

Years ago I was flying an approach into Seattle's airport (Seatac?),
and not very far off the extended centerline of the runway I was to
use was another airport, with a runway aligned almost the same way. I
wonder how often visitors land at the wrong airport?

I have lined up on a taxiway by mistake, in the middle of the afternoon and
I was well rested. That was as a student pilot, and back before every
incident became a big deal. In any case, that was a common enough
occurrance in those days on Runway 18 at Tampa and the controller caught the
error before I could even roll out with the wrong alignment.

However, I have also seen some of the faulty reasoning that can occur during
the hours of darkness, especially when it is not your normal waking hours,
and have been a participant a few times--and not only in aviation. In this
particular case, the crew almost certainly would have seen what was wrong,
and acted appropriately, if there had been any activity in progress on the
taxiway--but they also would have been far less likely to fall into a
similar sequence of errors during the beginning of the night-time low
traffic period. I have read that the highest incidence of really poor
reasoning and decision making occurs between the hours of approximately 1:00
am and 6:00 am, with the time periods just before and after being not quite
as attrocious. Just as a couple of examples, the nuclear power plant
accidents at Three Mile Island and also at Chernobyl both occurred during
the pre-dawn time periods which would have been the second half of a mornal
sleeping period.

So my point is that, if we really want to be serious about safety and good
decision making; sanctioning the above flight crew is probably a poor
choice. We might do a lot better to simply accept our failings as humans,
which are unlikely to change meaningfully, and take a hard look at which
activities really MUST be accomplished during those hours, how much such
activity is truly necessary, and also the possibility that staffing levels
should be greater in order to assure a greater margin of safety in the high
risk time periods.

IMHO, we have been going in exactly the wrong direction and, since the
subject of this thread was an airline transport incident, I will use them as
my example. Just a few decades ago, the crew of a transport aircraft on an
international flight would have included a Navigator and a Flight Engineer
in addition to the Pilor and Copilot. That provided a lot more backup, and a
lot more opportunity to notice something amiss and call attention to it. In
addition, I have every reason to suppose that the staffing level in the
tower is also reduced during non peak hours.

Peter