Runway pilots grounded

The names of both pilots who landed a SpiceJet flight on the wrong runway in the city airport on Monday afternoon have been struck off the airline’s roster.
Four members of the permanent investigation board of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are probing the incident.
“Both pilots have been de-rostered and the matter is being thoroughly investigated,” Sanjay Agarwal, the CEO of SpiceJet, said in a statement on Tuesday.
At 2.46pm on Monday, the flight from Bagdogra, with 139 on board, landed on the primary runway, which had been closed for maintenance work. More than a dozen men were working on the runway then and three vehicles were parked there.
The pilots, one of them a foreigner, told the AAI investigators that they were trying to land on the secondary runway and did not know where they went wrong, said sources.
According to them, although the lights of the primary runway had been switched off, Instrument Landing System equipment might have been functional. “The pilots may have received transmission from the glide path and localisers and got confused,” said an airport official.
“However, even if they had received transmission, they should have ignored that since they knew that they would have to land on the secondary runway,” added the official.
03/12/08 The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Dec 2008, Safety Dec 2008, SpiceJet Dec 2008