Air Canada conducting full safety review after close calls last year

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SAINT LAURENT, QC (NEWS 1130) – Air Canada is undertaking a full safety review of its operations after a pair of close calls in less than four months last year, both at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

It’s not just the interest of the Transportation Safety Board that was piqued when the two near-misses happened.

“Transport Canada also with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the U.S. looking on as well because it happened in the U.S.,” says McGill University aviation analyst Karl Moore.

In July, Air Canada flight 759 nearly landed on four passenger jets awaiting takeoff after the flight crew mistook a crowded taxiway for its intended runway.

Just months later, in October, flight 781 ignored several instructions from the tower to abort its landing approach because of fears another plane was still on the runway. The pilots landed the Airbus A320 safely and later blamed the miscommunication on problems with their radio.

“It’s really a beginner’s mistake in a way. It happens, we’re human beings but it’s something where that pilot is in trouble,” says Moore, who has taken that same flight from Montreal several times.

“It’s (flight) something that gets in later in the evening so there’s some pilot fatigue potentially as part of that. There’s also some specific things about San Francisco that are going to be different than New York or Houston or LA.”

The layout of the airport’s runways in the City by the Bay have been blamed for other recent accidents.

“The runways at San Francisco International are kind of unique because they are very close together. That also means visually, you can kind of get mixed up a little more easily,” says aviation analyst John Nance, a former commercial pilot.

Whether that played a part in the Air Canada case in July will be part of the company’s safety review says Moore.

“It (the review) will include increased pilot training. They’re also going to do some more flights where they have a supervisor go along to see at SFO (San Francisco) what the particular circumstances are, what are some of the difficulties.”

Even though the cases happened months ago, Moore says it’s not unusual the country’s largest airline only announced the review now.

“If there’s an accident and there’s death, you look at it instantly, you get on it as soon as you can, literally the same day. Something like this it makes sense that it would probably take a little while to do the review and get it through Canadian authorities.”

This all comes as Transport Canada is mulling over changes to pilot regulations.

“Transport Canada is in the midst of considering whether they should decrease the amount of hours pilots can fly in Canada, or Canadian pilots can fly,” says Moore.

“It’s something they’ve been looking at for a while but something like this (review) may encourage it and speed it along. But at this point Canada allows pilots to fly for a couple hours longer than in the U.S. and some of the other major jurisdictions we would naturally compare ourselves to.”

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