Originally Posted by
Boraxo
As an outsider it seems to me the system is broken if a flight crew (or airline) can accidentally or intentionally overwrite the tapes, which contain critical evidence. Clearly ATC was aware of the incident. Why not provide ATC with authority to ground the plane until the tapes are pulled? No doubt this is not normally part of their domain or routine practice, but not sure who else can be trusted. I certainly don't trust the airline or the pilots who were involved in a near miss.
SFO ATC was part of the problem that night (pages 16-20 in the NTSB report). AC was not the only airline with an issue related to 28R and Taxiway C that night. There was another flight prior to with the same or a similar confusion (page 9, DL 521).
I'm not sure who else you fly besides UA, but there are ample records out there about other airlines who had planes land on the wrong runways, or on taxiways.
I prefer to look at this event as a major wake-up call to Air Canada (where changes have already been made and more are to come), to SFO ATC, to other airlines, to the FAA, Transport Canada and the NTSB and anyone else I left out. But then I'm a pragmatic optimist.
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