Landing on Taxiways is a No-No

Posted October 21, 2009, 12:43 p.m.

I’m not a pilot—not even a private pilot [yet]—but I have a long-standing interest in aviation. Back when I used to have free time, I spent a fair amount of it flying in computer flight simulators like X-Plane. I was to the point (and probably still am) that I could take off in real-world weather conditions (which X-Plane downloads from the web), navigate successfully to my destination airport, and land safely. I even used to test myself with disaster scenarios—landing with one or more engines out, navigating in poor weather, instrument failures, etc.—and usually survived. Not always though ;-).

Because of this experience and my own interest in this field, I am more knowledgeable than many of my peers about aviation news. I, for example, was able to explain to my coworkers what a pitot tube does and why it’s important when we were discussing the crash of Air France flight 447 this summer.

That’s why I know that the pilots who landed their airliner on Taxiway M (instead of, say, a runway) at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Monday have no excuse. Runways have very, very different markings than taxiways—different day-time paint jobs, and different night-time lighting—and even I, with my very limited experience, can tell them apart from a great distance in the air. The article says nothing about the weather conditions in Atlanta on Monday, but even in poor visibility you don’t land unless you know what you’re landing on (duh).

Thank God this incident didn’t kill people. It’s not uncommon for aircraft to be sitting on taxiways (waiting their turn for takeoff) while planes are coming in to land, and usually it’s frowned upon for a landing plane to land on the waiting plane(s).

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it’s probably best to avoid eye contact.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

He who gives himself to vanity, and does not give himself to meditation, forgetting the real aim of life and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation.

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

Nothing is easier than to falsify the past. Lifeless instruction will do it. If you rob it of vitality, stiffen it with pedantry, sophisticate it with argument, chill it with unsympathetic comment, you render it as dead as any academic exercise.

I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it.

Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

‘Stand on the other side from where the physics is happening’ is actually a good general rule for scientific equipment.

Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, says the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.

Some western scholars have tried to argue that Islamic anti-Semitism is only a recent phenomenon learned from the Nazis and that Jews lived safely under Islamic rule for centuries, especially in medieval Spain. These assertions are not supported by the evidence.

I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign.

You cannot be half a saint, you must be a whole saint or no saint at all.

Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.

But let us never forget . . . beyond Europe’s borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders.