Harrison Ford accidentally lands on active taxi-way at SNA

[adisneyaunt]

Wow, that's some video. Doesn't it look like the person in a truck is actually looking at Fords plane... like staring at it... he probably was saying WTH to himself... speculation of course.

 

[bcla]

From the Daily Mail...

View attachment 220284

That diagram isn't quite accurate compared to the actual video. It makes it look like he was on a collision course with the taxiing airliner and had pull up and then land. The airliner is also on taxiway L (the one on the far end) and not K (a bit inside) like the diagram claims. Certainly it wasn't good to land on a taxiway and not on the runway with the "20L" in big letters, but a lot of the reporting made it sound like it was worse than the video shows.

 

[John VN]

To me it appears that at 13 seconds he woke up and saw the commercial plane because the right wing dips as though he was reacting and thinking about banking to avoid but then it is a "OH WELL, I can make this" and lands.

 

[bcla]

To me it appears that at 13 seconds he woke up and saw the commercial plane because the right wing dips as though he was reacting and thinking about banking to avoid but then it is a "OH WELL, I can make this" and lands.

Most news stories claim he said something like "Is there supposed to be an airliner below me?" as he was landing. The video shows that he never really altered his approach though.

Certainly he screwed up badly by missing a well-marked runway in broad daylight, but it's not as bad as the reporting makes it out to be.

 

[Mokat76]

Most news stories claim he said something like "Is there supposed to be an airliner below me?" as he was landing. The video shows that he never really altered his approach though.

Certainly he screwed up badly by missing a well-marked runway in broad daylight, but it's not as bad as the reporting makes it out to be.

He landed on a taxiway. He flew over a taxiing commercial airliner in doing so. It is every bit as bad as people were saying.

 

[bcla]

He landed on a taxiway. He flew over a taxiing commercial airliner in doing so. It is every bit as bad as people were saying.

A lot of the reporting (like the annotated Daily Mail photo) is that he was pretty much on a collision course with the airliner and had to make a sudden move, which wasn't true. I know it's not a minor screwup, but how close it was to disaster was way overblown.

 

[JaxDad]

Harrison Ford had another aircraft incident:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/ente...-faa-airplane-runway-investigation/index.html
The article doesn’t mention the 2017 incident. Maybe he should let Chewie do all the flying from now on.

 

[RamblingMad]

He has had incidents in the past.

 

[cabanafrau]

Happened when he was in the process of updating his license. Seems clear he should get dinged for the mistake. Next time it might not turn out so well.

 

[MarkLT1]

None of the articles I've seen on it say. The airport diagram shows only one taxiway (C) that's parallel to the runways, so I'm thinking that's it. Or it could have been on the apron.

Someone on this Reddit thread says it was taxiway C.

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/5u34vg

Sounds like some pilots find the layout confusing since the commercial and general aviation runways are so close to each other. I'm more familiar with Oakland Airport where the general aviation runways are in a completely different section of the airport than the commercial runway.

He clearly should have known. Just look at the diagram- it is simple! The runways are black, and the taxiways are grey. I could understand if he tried to land on the hangers, terminal, etc.. as they are all black too! The airport should really work on THAT issue.

Edit: Aaaand.. this is a necro-thread from 3 years ago. Doh!

 

[cabanafrau]

He clearly should have known. Just look at the diagram- it is simple! The runways are black, and the taxiways are grey. I could understand if he tried to land on the hangers, terminal, etc.. as they are all black too! The airport should really work on THAT issue.

Edit: Aaaand.. this is a necro-thread from 3 years ago. Doh!

It's active again because Ford had yet another incident.

 

[MarkLT1]

It's active again because Ford had yet another incident.

Yup.. noticed that (After my post). Oops.

 

[bcla]

He clearly should have known. Just look at the diagram- it is simple! The runways are black, and the taxiways are grey. I could understand if he tried to land on the hangers, terminal, etc.. as they are all black too! The airport should really work on THAT issue.

Edit: Aaaand.. this is a necro-thread from 3 years ago. Doh!

That's just a diagram.

The runway is the color of the pavement. The main runway at SNA is repaved often, and typically fresh asphalt. The small runway that Ford was supposed to land on isn't used as often and is for small planes. Most satellite images show it as a pale gray.

Harrison Ford landed on the apron, which is a very dark gray in most photos. However, it's should have been pretty obvious since there was no runway number.

 

[MarkLT1]

That's just a diagram.

Umm.. that was the joke..