Near Collision On A Runway

A Japan Air Lines B777 launched itself without takeoff clearance from Hokkaido's New Chitose Airport on Jan. 22, evidently not noticing that an All Nippon Airways A320 hadn't vacated (i.e., beyond sight, was still occupying the runway after its landing). On slippery runways, the case here, pilots tend to roll through rather than brake hard and risk skidding or aquaplaning. Despite the poor prevailing visibility, an Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) air traffic controller saw the JAL B777's movement on his surface radar and instructed it to stop about 10 seconds into its takeoff roll. If the order had been made just a few seconds later, there likely would have been a collision.

The incident occurred in poor weather - snow- at dark, about 9:16 p.m. The JAL flight, bound for Haneda with 201 passengers, was reportedly ordered to line up on the runway and wait. But on lining up the pilot straightaway rolled and began to accelerate. At the time, one of the airport's two three-kilometer runways was not in use as workers were removing snow from it, so arriving and departing airplanes were using the same runway for both taking off and landing.

As it was, because of the B777's weight and the slippery runway conditions, the accelerating B777 closed to within 1,000 meters of the A320. After the ordered abort, the B777 left the runway and taxied back to the holding point, departing 10 minutes later (brakes cooling time?).

JAL admitted the pilot's mistake and made an apology to the ASDF but failed to carry out any further required reporting. Over a month later, on Feb. 28, the Transport Ministry found out and admonished JAL. Under the Civil Aeronautics Law, such cases are considered significant incidents. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, JAL's response said it did not consider the case a significant incident "because the pilot thought the ANA plane had already left the runway and did not see any danger in taking off." However, JAL admitted that the pilot overlooked the fact that the flight had not been approved to take off. The executive directors then agreed to take a month's pay cut as penance for concealing the incident. The lack of visibility was the set-up for this scenario, where the price could have been much higher.

On March 19 the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, commenting on the carrier's handling of this and other incidents involving the use of outdated maintenance manuals, commented also on the role of the regulator: "The transport ministry's Civil Aviation Bureau should also make further efforts to monitor safety in the sky. Perhaps it should change its name to the Aviation Safety Bureau."