Harrison Ford Mistakenly Lands Husky On KSNA Taxiway

On Thu, 16 Feb 2017 16:28:35 +0000 (UTC), (Don Poitras)
wrote:

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:03:57 -0500, Vaughn Simon wrote:

On 2/15/2017 12:21 PM, Larry Dighera wrote:
Is it time for venerated pilot Harrison Ford to ground himself for less than
adequate judgment skills to act as Pilot In Command?

The runway is the one with the big "20L" painted on its near-end.

This ignominious incident is worse than Senator Inhoff's landing on a taxiway
because there was a big X on the runway.


Nonsense Larry. Did you bother taking a glance at the airport diagram?

I was based at KSNA for a decade. I'm very familiar with the layout.

Anytime you have parallel runways, with one fat and the other skinny,
this incident will occasionally happen because it's easy to focus on
only the skinny runway while confusing it for the larger parallel
runway. It's a matter of sight fixation (seeing what you expect to see)
Once you've done that, then the even skinnier taxiway becomes the
"skinny" runway in the pilot's head. I know that it happens at PBIA,
and that pilots are specifically warned about it.

I understand your point, but I don't recall anyone ever having landed on that
taxiway. The taxiway is quite narrow, I would estimate about 1/3rd the width
of the narrow 75' wide runway 20L. Take a look here
https://goo.gl/maps/xgXjy2uURJm and you'll see from the surface markings and
layout how difficult it is to mistake taxiway Charlie for runway 20L.

Really? Try this:
http://poitras.org/misc/ksna1.png

Thank you for taking the time to create that comparison image, Don.

I completely comprehend your argument, however if the pilot In Command fails to
check the numbers painted on the end of the runway, how is he to know he is
complying with the ATC clearance?

Mr. Ford is either losing his cognitive abilities, or he lacks due respect for
the requirements to operate responsibly, or both. We are all faced with the
former. Darwin usually purges those with the later attitude from the gene pool
sooner or later.


Message-ID:

"There's an old saying that every pilot starts with a full bag of
luck, and empty bag of experience - the trick being to fill the
bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck"
-- Colin Southern