Turkish Airlines A330 Tries To Take Off From Newark Taxiway

I would say the passengers have a right to know and deplane based on their judgment.

Passengers would panic after a wide body rejected takeoff as smoke fills the cabin with burning rubber from the tires.
Pilot fatigue. Crew rest should be at least 24 hours and at a full service hotel. Not a courtyard by Marriott. .

D3King,

Dramatic much?

I don’t trust Turkish Airlines, too many safety related incidents. Shame, because it looks like the service is decent and the hard product has improved significantly.

I'm surprised they let these guys proceed to take off 45 minutes later? Isn't this a rather signifiant incident that reflects extremely poor situational awareness, judgement, etc? Wouldn't a new crew be in order here while the situation is investigated?

You probably never been on a rejected takeoff.

Umm, investigate what?
We already know what happened.
Safety and redundancy which are there to prevent such event are working as expected.
This is writing a report stuff. Now if it went beyond V1, that will be more interesting.

Human makes mistakes all the time. You don't call CSI every time someone spills coffee right, especially with redundancies like the coffee lid still on?

Now if it went

Aren't runway lights always yellow? I'd surely not be the only passenger to spot that the "runway" lights were the wrong colour?

This has happened many times and is called loss of situational awareness. What is surprising is that the air traffic controller with today's high resolution ground control radars has not caught the mistake before starting the take off run. It is his responsibility to monitor compliance of his clearances as well. Flight safety is a team effort. When a holes on slices of swiss cheese coincide , that is when the accidents happen.

They got better luck than SQ-006

They're white until the last 2,000 feet, where they're amber/yellow. And, yeah, I'd definitely have noticed if I were in a window seat on that flight, but then most passengers don't know the difference and probably wouldn't be paying attention even if they did. Not a lot you could do about it as a passenger anyway, though. One could scream, "Abort! Abort! Abort! We're on a taxiway!," but the pilots wouldn't be able to hear that from the flight deck unless maybe you're seated in the first row (and, even then, perhaps not.) By the time the flight attendants could call them (if they even answered during a takeoff roll,) it would have been after ATC noticed and instructed them to stop anyway.

While I'd agree that cancelling the flight would have been excessive (it's not like Turkish is going to have a spare crew lying around at every station, so cancelling would be the only option if crew couldn't go,) an investigation - which should indeed result in a report - is appropriate. I'm assuming that one will be conducted, just as it was when CDG Tower accidentally instructed United to change runways on short final last summer. Whether everything works out in the end or not, investigations into all of the contributing factors when something like this happens are how the aviation community as a whole becomes continually more safe. We learn from mistakes - regardless of who made them or if someone else caught them - so that they aren't repeated in the future. The point is not to have a blame game, but to learn from the incident and see if there are things that can be improved by any party involved to prevent similar mistakes in the future. I would hope that this would happen from an incident of this magnitude.

You can be certain the NTSB will investigate. This is a big deal with potentially catastrophic consequences (see Comair 5191 or various other takeoff accidents). As soon as the throttles were advanced for takeoff on a taxiway this became a serious incident. The fact that some layers of the system caught the error this time doesn't mean there isn't room to improve the layers that failed. Understanding how the flight crew missed signage and lighting cues (and possibly moving map indications) can help improve those systems in such a way that fallible humans can catch a mistake much earlier than this.

Avionics manufacturers have actually developed takeoff runway alignment checks in their systems to prevent a repeat of Comair 5191, but it's quite possible they're probably not set up to trigger on parallel taxiways and this is a recent innovation, so quite possibly not available on the incident aircraft.

Unbelievable that the two pilots were not immediately suspended. Not a good advert for Turkish Airlines nor their safety culture. I will be avoiding as if I remember correctly their Amsterdam crash was due to pilot error. When airlines grow at the pace Turkish has done in recent years I worry about safety as it is incredibly difficult to train and manage people effectively when growing so fast.

Although anyone who noticed would know the flight wasn't aborted because of "mechanical issue". I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and what would the crew do if I requested to de-board because I don't feel safe.

Nah. I've been on planes with rejected takeoffs. I'm often amazed how many passengers around don't even notice it. They don't even pause their conversation.

Disagree. Investigation should absolutely be done to figure out how the mistake was made and how long it took to recognize a problem so that you can avoid it in the future or add automation to warn atc.

Investigate exactly how the TK pilots mistook taxiway P for a runway. Is it pilot fatigue? Bad signage? Sign lighting malfunction? Badly trained pilot? Bad CRM?

We know WHAT happened. We do not know why. That is why the NTSB will investigate.

Yeah, speaking of ATC , where were they? Don’t they monitor planes traveling down taxiways versus runways? Aren’t they in constant contact with pilots prior to takeoff? We’re they sleep deprived, distracted etc? Just saying….

David, they’d yell at you to shut up and get back in your seat! Lol

My thoughts exactly!! See my previous post

Brakes not "breaks."

If I would have been on that flight, you can sure bet I would have demanded to get off that plane. And not in a disruptive and aggressive type of way. I would be having a panic attack at the thought of flying that distance with those pilots. Maybe they should have delayed it longer and brought in a new crew. But God forbid you delay the flight so as to mess up their on time ratings. And I know English is the universal language for pilots and controllers, so I have to wonder if that played a role too. My ex-husband and my niece recently retired from being an ATC. So I've heard more than enough about how difficult it can be sometimes to understand pilots from another country because their grasp of the English language isn't quite as good as I would think they should be required to be. And if you think I'm being politically incorrect, your wrong. Of course everyone is going to speak their own language. I just think simple mistakes could be avoided if they made the requirement of speaking English a bit more difficult.
Of course, in this instance I don't know if it was a factor. Just curious what else could have caused the flight crew to make such a monumental mistake.

If they really were going 90kts or faster it disturbs me that initially they were going to depart again without checking their tires or brakes. I would have gone back to the gate and had the brakes and tires inspected for damage by a mechanic and a crew member. Then I would have had a serious conversation with the other crew members about what broke down in cockpit discipline that allowed this to happen and determine, as a crew, if they could safely operate this flight tonight.

Have everyone wait around while they fly in a new crew from IST?

Should have different colour lights for runaway and taxiway so there won't be confusion. The occurance of such situation is very rare but the result can be catastrophic if it happens.

What an unprofessional airport personnel! Let go so far the situation before even noticing it! Embrassing!