Lufthansa aircraft takes a wrong turn; Mishap averted

Kolkata: A blinding downpour and perhaps an erroneous marking of the taxi-bay at Kolkata airport nearly triggered a mishap in the wee hours of Sunday. A Lufthansa flight, bound for Frankfurt with 230 passengers on board, took a wrong turn while taxing for takeoff and was stopped in the nick of time.
It was around 1.07 am that flight LH 751 pushed back from parking bay 43 and started taxing towards the primary runway, taking taxiway C. But on reaching taxibay B, the pilot suddenly took a left turn towards the secondary runway instead of heading straight to the take-off point on the primary runway.
The nose wheel of the runway had already entered the wrong taxiway and the rear wheels were just about to roll in when an alert air traffic controller noticed it from the tower. He raised an alarm and the pilot was stopped short of a no-go zone.
The plane would have run into double trouble: the secondary runway was being repaired and taxiway B is too narrow (used only by ATR aircraft) to handle the 84-ft wheelbase of the Airbus A340-300.
As air traffic control alerted the ground support of both the Airports Authority of India and Lufthansa, there was a scramble to rush to the spot with a ‘follow-me’ van, which guides the pilot to make way through the runway area.
For the next 40 minutes, it was a tough yet delicate task for the officials to guide the 250-tonne aircraft to the right track and the flight finally took off at 1.40 am — 35 minutes behind schedule.
27/10/08 Arpit Basu/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Oct 2008, Foreign Oct 2008, Safety Oct 2008