Passenger planes miss runways in Japan

Source: Associated Press Publication date: Feb 28, 2000

TOKYO (AP) -- Two Japan Air System passenger planes had landing mishaps Monday, with one jet touching down on a runway under construction and the other overrunning the landing strip.

There were no reports of injuries, said Transport Ministry official Tatsuyuki Shimazu. At Tokyo's Haneda airport, a JAS domestic flight carrying 99 passengers and crew landed on the wrong runway -- one that was being built parallel to the strip currently in use.

Three people were working on the incomplete runway when the plane landed.

In the other incident, another JAS domestic plane with 42 passengers and crew ran off a snow-blanketed runway in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island. (sk)

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 28, 2000

Answers

The runway under construction had big "X's" painted on it, but not even that influenced the pilot!

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 28, 2000.

It's a version of "target fixation" which has lead to many fighter pilot deaths. In the fighter world, pilots visually lock onto a target and actually fly into it, being so intent to hit it with their ordinance.

In "runway fixation" a pilot sees a runway and mentally locks on to land. It's caused several commercial aircraft looking to land at Tampa International to end up landing three miles away at MacDill AFB. The crew sees a runway and by gosh, it's the one they're going to land on.

I've seen one example of where a flight was in the process of seting up to land at a military airfield ten miles away from their destination, but because they were looking for a north-south runway they homed in on the first one they saw when they came out of the clouds.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 29, 2000.