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Being a Masshole not limited to our roadways
By Kaz on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 11:32am
At around 6:30 AM on Thursday, air traffic controllers gave clearance for US Air Flight 27 (an Airbus 320) to take-off on runway 15R. Meanwhile, at the crossing with Taxiway M, a Ford Explorer driven by a construction worker did not call to the tower to request permission to cross and caused an extremely dangerous near miss at Logan. The plane's wing came within inches of the vehicle as it ultimately departed safely. The driver is suspended pending investigation. All construction at the airport is now on hold as investigators determine whether this was a failure of the driver or a failure of the system.
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Comments
Where did you get "came
Where did you get "came within inches?" Last night the television report said the truck was within 100-200 feet. From the Herald:
Seconds while taking off is not inches.
FAA Spokesman
The FAA spokesman said that the truck *just* cleared the runway when the plane passed it. I took that to mean inches.
Back of the envelope math: 200 mph = 293 feet/sec. If "seconds" passed before the plane reached the intersection, then it would have been a few hundred feet away from the truck when the truck was on the runway. There is your 100-200 feet. However, I'm writing about where the truck was when the wings passed. In the same seconds, if the truck was doing the ~15 mph speed limit for ground vehicles at most airports (I don't know Logan's specifically), then in the same 3-4 seconds it would have only gone about 50 feet. An A320's wingspan is a little more than 100 feet, so if the truck went 50 feet from the center of the runway, it would have been exactly at the wingtip. So, it depends on what you call the "near miss". It was "hundreds of feet" from being under the front tire, it was "inches" from the wing...either way they missed each other by only a few seconds.
Same difference
Whether a few inches or a hundred feet, we're very, very lucky not to be reading about a runway collision.
Based on this one incident, it's impossible to tell if this is part of a growing trend of near misses or an isolated screw up.
Trend
Obviously, it's usually plane-on-plane problems, but the whole reason a construction truck was out on the runways in the first place is that they're building a new taxiway to try and remove some of the "driving around" that planes have to do because Logan has the highest number of incidents on its tarmac of any other airport in the US. I also found a website describing a series of warning lights that would alert pilots preparing to throttle up for take-off if something like this truck were to invade their runway further down where they can't see yet. It is supposed to come on line this year sometime. I don't know how recent that info was though.
Depends on how many inches...
Maybe they came within 1,200 to 2,400 inches...
Good point. Any time you
Good point.
Any time you cross a runway while a plane is taking off or landing, that's a near miss.