Right here’s a stunning incident that ended up being a really shut name, as flagged by The Aviation Herald…
Boeing 747’s Riyadh Airport taxiway try
This occurred on Monday, April 22, 2024, and entails a 29-year-old Boeing 747-400 with the license plate 9H-AKF. This was a freighter flight that was scheduled to function from Riyadh (RUH) to Nairobi (NBO). The plane is owned by Air Atlanta Europe Malta, although is at the moment leased by Saudi Arabian Airways.
At 12:37AM native time, the jet was cleared to take off on runway 33R, which has a size of 13,796 toes (4,205 meters). Nonetheless, for no matter purpose, the pilots as a substitute tried to take off from taxiway Ok, which is parallel to the runway. This taxiway has a size of solely 4,880 toes (1,490 meters).
The pilots seemingly didn’t notice their error, because the jet accelerated all the way in which to a velocity of 110 knots, which is sort of two-thirds of the plane’s takeoff velocity. As soon as at that top velocity, the pilots realized their error and rejected the takeoff.
The plane managed to come back to a cease 4,780 toes (1,450 meters) down the taxiway, which means that the airplane stopped with simply 100 toes to spare. Wow.
While you reject a takeoff at such a excessive velocity, you’ll be able to’t simply try to depart once more, because the brakes could possibly be overheated, and an inspection must be carried out. Clearly there have been some points, because the flight ended up being canceled, and the airplane spent almost two days on the bottom, previous to returning to service. Saudi Arabia’s Aviation Investigation Bureau is now wanting into this incident.
How may an incident like this occur?
Whereas pilots making an attempt to take off from a taxiway relatively than a runway is uncommon, it does occur. As protected as aviation is, it’s nonetheless closely reliant on people, and people make errors from time to time. When you have got tens of 1000’s of flights on daily basis, there are certain to be some points.
As you’d anticipate, sometimes one thing like this occurs as a consequence of components like lack of focus, exhaustion, being in a rush, and many others.
What makes this explicit incident attention-grabbing is that it’s truly not the primary time that this occurred on the identical precise runway. In 2018, a Jet Airways Boeing 737 additionally tried to take off from taxiway Ok after being cleared for takeoff on runway 33R. In that case, the airplane overran the taxiway, and ended up coming to a cease on tender floor.
Now, The Aviation Herald notes how the present aerodrome chart for Riyadh Airport truly doesn’t present taxiway Ok on it, which is unnecessary. Not solely that, however the taxiway simply has a really unusual placement — should you’re taxiing towards the runway after which make the primary left flip, you may assume that you just’re on the runway, while you’re actually on the taxiway (beneath is a visualization of the incident that occurred in 2018).
So in fact pilots ought to be cautious and shouldn’t be taking off on a taxiway, however this can be a case the place I can undoubtedly see how one thing like this might occur.
Backside line
A Boeing 747 making an attempt to take off from Riyadh Airport unintentionally accelerated down the taxiway, relatively than the runway. The airplane accelerated as much as 110 knots, earlier than rejecting the takeoff, and coming to a cease round 100 toes earlier than the top of the taxiway.
Whereas incidents like this shouldn’t occur, I could make sense of how a mistake like this might happen. The airport’s charts don’t appear to precisely present this explicit taxiway, and on high of that, the format of the taxiways may confuse pilots. Hopefully one thing is finished in order that this doesn’t occur a 3rd time…
What do you make of this Boeing 747 taxiway incident at Riyadh Airport?
