A FLIGHT narrowly dodged disaster on Wednesday afternoon after landing on Paphos airport’s taxiway instead of the main landing strip.
The Thomson Airways’ Boeing 737-800 flight from Doncaster had 192 passengers and seven cabin crew on board and was fortunate to avoid a catastrophic crash on the empty taxiway.
According to the online aviation news site, Aviation Herald, flight BY3350 was on approach to and cleared to land on runway 29, but aligned with and landed on the parallel taxiway.
Hermes Airports’ spokesman Adamos Aspris confirmed the reports yesterday: “It seems that the captain of a British Boeing 737 landed on the taxiway instead of the main runway.”
The weather conditions were reportedly slightly hazy, but cloudless and with good visibility.
Asked about the potential dangers of such a landing, Aspris said: “This was a least expected occurrence, and it is a big issue for us. There is research being undertaken by the relevant authorities who will investigate the matter thoroughly.”
The main authority involved is Cyprus’ Air Accident Investigation Authority (AAIA) who yesterday assigned three staff to begin gathering information on the case.
AAIA Chairman Costas Orphanos told the Cyprus Mail this was the first incident of its kind at Paphos airport: “We are collecting information from the pilots, air safety reports and on weather conditions, and we are in contact with the UK’s accident investigation authority.”
Orphanos said that such incidents have occurred elsewhere, such as in the USA, UK and Italy.
“We have the authority to make recommendations to the government and they will make changes if necessary,” he said.
By yesterday morning, the story had caused a stir on the popular pilots’ message board pprune.org.
According to one commenter on the website, the particular layout of Paphos airport could have played a part in the incident.
‘Dani’ said: “Paphos airport is a tricky one: long and narrow runway, parallel to a taxiway which is about the same width and length. Easy to confuse. No disaster, because it is intended as a military emergency strip… unless there is taxi-ing traffic.”
While another, ‘Dairn’, said: “The taxiway is longer than the runway, the same width and quite a lot brighter as it’s not covered in rubber.”
“Its contrast in most lighting conditions makes it more obvious than the main landing runway, “he added, “especially during a circling approach. Also… the landing runway is closer to the passenger terminal than the taxiway; in most places the parallel taxiway or emergency runway are closer to the civilian apron”.
These factors, Dairn suggests, could lead pilots to creating a wrong mental model that is hard to change even when presented with runway markings and approach lights in the final stages.
A third poster expressed surprise the control tower did not notice the misalignment, while another was perplexed the pilots did not notice any markings on the taxiway.
Following the incident, a replacement crew was flown to Paphos. The aircraft departed for the return flight BY-3351 nine-and-a-half hours after landing, reaching Doncaster with a total delay of 10.5 hours.
