SEATAC, Wash. How could an airliner with 121 passengers on board land in the wrong place at Sea-Tac Airport? The FAA is investigating the mistake that's just coming to light.
It's not a case of landing on the wrong runway, but landing on pavement that's not a runway at all.
The incident involved an American Airlines MD-80 flight 1763 from Dallas/Fort Worth to Sea-Tac on Friday afternoon, March 14.
The public learned about the incident Wednesday.
The American Airlines jet landed on the light-colored taxiway.
According to the FAA, the plane was due to land on runway 16R. But instead, the aircraft landed on taxiway C a relatively new strip of pavement built about three years ago.
It was about 4 p.m. with a 10-mile visibility and light rain.
The taxiway was marked with a big X as far as the approach is concerned, indicating this is not an active runway and of course markings on a runway vs. a taxiway are completely different, said FAA spokesman Mike Fergus.
The aircraft landed safely and we are investigating, said Tara Baten, American Airlines.
While there were no other planes on the taxiway at the time, the incident raises questions over the subject of increasing concern by the country's air safety agencies runway incursions that is the potential for collisions between planes and anything on the ground including other planes.
The worst airline disaster of all time involved the collision of two jumbo jets in the Canary Islands in 1977s, where both planes tried to land on the same runway at the same time, killing 683 people.
Now there is a drive to create and install new technologies to prevent disaster.
Anytime we have a system that depends on humans not making mistakes and isn't ready to absorb those mistakes, we have a problem, said air safety analyst John Nance.
But Nance says don't be quick to blame the pilots.
A pilot is looking at so many things that we need to continually upgrade how we are marking runways and taxiways to make sure that we minimize the potential for confusion, he said.
Sea-Tac has done a number of things over the years to increase visibility to prevent runway incursions.
Plane lands safely at Sea-Tac, but not on runway!!
Moderator: Latest news team
The disaster in Tenerife wasn't caused by two 747's landing at the same time. The KLM 747 was taking off without proper clearance and the Panam 747 was backtracking on the same RWY in thik fog. Planes had to backtrack on the same RWY since taxiways were overcrowded due to a diversion from Las Palmas to Tenerife, because of a bomb trheat in LPA.
