canadiancow

I'd argue it means the tools are poorly designed.

NYTA

Having flown small planes for years as an IFR/Commercial rated pilot with a decent number of IFR approaches, I have to say I was shocked the first time I sat in the cockpit jumpseat of an airliner (a 747) at how little actual piloting happened. Everything was totally programmed and they only turned a knob to change altitudes as requested by ATC.
Nobody touched the control yoke until a few seconds before landing when they disconnected the autopilot to flare manually. I think I was looking out the window more than the crew who seemed to be quite busy with checklists.

KenHamer

That too.

KenHamer

So why can't they be setting all that stuff up during those extended periods of interminable boredom?

Yes, I know several aspects of the landing are only determined shortly before landing, but there are only a limited number of possibke scenarios. And many of those details (i.e. radio frequencies) will be the same no matter what.

Fizzer

I take a slightly different interpretation of "on Land" . In this case the word Land is a noun and could refer, quite literally, to an airport on land, as opposed, for example, to a seaplane base where the airport is not "On Land". Is it possible that there are different regulations for seaplanes and this statement merely clarifies that this particular regulation applies to land based airports only?

Parsing the statement to suggest that the rules only apply to aircraft that have actually landed relies on using Land as a verb when it is quite clearly a noun in the earlier context. I know that laws and regulations are usually written to minimize such ambiguities wherever possible and it is hard to imagine that the lawyers who drafted those rules were not aware of such a basic grammatical difference. I assume therefore that it was intended, for whatever reason. Mine is purely a speculative guess, however.

Ldnn1

You are making a non-sensical and irrelevant point.

There is no ambiguity as between the first and second instances. The first is 'on land' which means on land as opposed to on water. But that is not the term in question. If it said 'on landing' it would be different, but it doesn't.

The second term - 'lands' - is clearly and can only be a verb. The question - as noted by Transpacificflyer - is whether the verb 'to land' in this context requires actually touching down on the runway, or does it also encompass an aborted landing as in the AC incident.

Fizzer

Perhaps transpacifics was not the best post to have quoted. My comment was related to the earlier discussion as to whether on Land applied given that the aircraft hadn't landed. Nothing more or less. However, please provide another explanation for why On Land is at the end of the first sentence. It obviously has a meaning, otherwise it wouldn't be there as the sentence makes sense without that particular phrase. I am not suggesting that my interpretation is correct but there has to be some reason. Is it irrelevant to the post quoted? Yes probably, but I quoted the nearest post rather than ones perhaps more pertinent to my point. Mea culpa.

The Lev

I think legally it is pretty clear that "lands on" means touching down - as inconvenient as that may be in this case.

NordsFan

Your post was not irrelevant or non-sensical. Your reading of "(...) on land" and the questions you raised about "land vs sea" facilities and "noun vs verb" are absolutely pertinent to the interpretation of the section of text you were referring to.

The Lev

Given that they were doing a visual approach and apparently not using their ILS, how do you think they would have landed the plane without looking out the window?

I'm not an expert in these matters but people seem to be assuming that "surely the pilots could not help but see four honking big aircraft sitting on the taxiway" - the problem is that in the dark from overhead, you don't see much - a few lights on the planes that could blend in with the plethora of other little lights on the runway/taxiway if you are not paying really close attention (like maybe you were trying to focus on landing the plane and using confirmation bias to tell you the runway is right in front of you).

Ldnn1

‘On land’ is there for precisely the reason Fizzer says: to limit the clause to airports on land as opposed to on water. This is presumably because the latter don’t typically have runways and taxiways of the sort found on land. But there is no question that SFO airport is on land. And if you read 12(i), you will see that it applies where an aircraft lands or departs. Thus it is not restricted to the act of landing; it is merely restricted to landings on and departures from land rather than water.

One could attempt an argument (as I think NordsFan has in mind) that this reference to ‘on land’ somehow colours the interpretation of what ‘to land’ means. But when you follow it through it doesn’t actually help with the pertinent question, which is whether ‘to land’ includes the approach to land or just the final touch down itself. A landing on water has an approach and touch down too so the land vs sea point is in my view a red herring. It doesn’t answer the question.

It is the temporal scope of the verb 'lands' in 12(i) that is relevant to the issue of whether or not the incident was reportable under this regulation.

I am inclined to that view too – principally because it would have been easy to expand the scope of 12(i) by saying e.g. “lands or attempts to land”. However I think Transpacific makes some very good points for the broader interpretation.

NordsFan

I'm not attempting to argue anything. I just wanted to point out that the post referred to was not non-sensical or irrelevant to interpreting the statute. I was not wading into the wider debate on the incident under investigation or the reportability of events. I was just pointing out the remark validly made by Fizzer on the reading of the first line of section 12 FAR.

It is interesting to note that the Canadian Aeronautics Act refers to arrivals and departures at aerodromes as opposed to the language used in the US statute: land/depart at airports on land.

Fizzer

So it seems that an actual landing is necessary before reporting is required. If so it seems silly in the context of what seems to have transpired.
Thanks for your support BTW Nordsfan and Ldnn1. It seems that it was not nonsensical but still irrelevant. I feel somewhat better.

canopus27

... and from what we know, the pilots were looking out of the window - because the interim report said they started to go around before the radio calls. They appear to have been hopelessly confused as to what part of the airport was a runway ... but they were looking out of the window.

The problem is that they did get just a wee bit close to the other planes before they went around

dhuey

I'm reading through this thread for the first time, and I have the benefit of hindsight. I'm struck by how many pilots were so dismissive of the idea that this was a catastrophe that was barely averted. Some pilots quite reasonably suggested that we wait and see before reaching that conclusion. But other pilots flat-out said that this was a normal situation and nothing to get worked up about.