SAN FRANCISCO — As a wayward Air Canada pilot guided his plane toward a landing on a crowded SFO taxiway July 7 in a now-infamous near-disaster, he passed over one fully loaded jet — and was directly over a second jet — before he was finally ordered to abort the landing by an air traffic controller, according to startling new information by federal investigators and an independent review.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators said Monday in an initial report that Air Canada flight 759 from Toronto — with 140 passengers aboard — descended below 100 feet and aborted the landing “after overflying the first airplane on the taxiway.” Federal investigators interviewed the captain on Friday.
With each new revelation — the NTSB report being the latest, and perhaps the most alarming — it becomes ever clearer just how close SFO came to a historic disaster.
New data obtained exclusively by this news organization add to the picture, showing that the Air Canada plane was just flying over a second fully loaded Philippine Airlines jet at 106 feet in the air — still continuing its descent — when an SFO air traffic controller finally warned him to abort his landing. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in its initial report that the Air Canada pilot did not begin his “go-around” until the air traffic controller told the pilot to pull up. It took a flight crew member from a jet on the taxiway to alert both the pilot and air traffic controller over the radio of the wayward Airbus 320.
Once past the second plane, the Air Canada jet continued to drop to as low as 81 feet before it began to climb, as aviation experts say such a late aborted landing takes a moment to stop the jet’s inertia and begin to ascend.
Ryan Jorgenson, a FlightAware senior aviation data analyst, pulled the time stamp from the air traffic audio of the moment the air traffic controller ordered the aborted landing and then used FAA Surface Movement Event Service location data to determine exactly where the plane was at 11:56:07 p.m. on July 7.
“If everything lines up with my data and the timestamp from the audio, it’s amazing that the pilots were even able to go-around that late in the final approach,” he said.
Mountain View pilot Max Trescott, who has been following the event, took it a step further, saying that had the Air Canada pilot waited five more seconds to pull up, he would have hit the third jet on the runway — a United Airlines 787 headed to Sydney, Australia filled, with fuel and passengers. He calculated the time element based on the new FlightAware data.
“I find it remarkable that the Air Canada crew had still not fully comprehended their situation as they were passing over the second airliner, when the tower called for the go-around,” Trescott said.
At the Air Canada flight’s lowest point of 81 feet — and headed straight for the third plane on the ground, United Airlines flight 863 — it was only 26 feet above the top of that airplane’s tail, Trescott said. A Boeing 787 is 55 feet tall.
And just as Canadian authorities had said in their preliminary report, the plane did not begin its climb until it had flown a quarter-mile over the taxiway.
According to the NTSB initial findings, federal investigators interviewed the Air Canada pilot Friday and will interview the first officer Tuesday. Air traffic controllers were interviewed at SFO and Northern California TRACON, the regional hub, on Sunday, and those will continue through Wednesday.
Federal officials have recovered the aircraft’s flight data recorder and security camera video from SFO of the incident approach. The NTSB says that video will be released once the public docket for this incident is opened in the next several months.
On Friday, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, who was on the Air Canada flight, wrote the airline and three aviation and transportation regulators requesting a “thorough and complete investigation.”
“As a passenger of Air Canada flight 759, I believe we have a right to know what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to make sure that no plane and its passengers are placed at such risk of loss again,” Jones wrote.
