A Turkish Airlines A350 taxied onto a Newark runway without clearance after ambiguous ATC phrasing—raising questions about why US controllers don't use standardized language.
lets get kennedy steve's opinion
"Turkish Airlines Plane Enters Newark Runway Without Clearance: Was ATC Language The Problem?"
Nope. Turkish's not understanding they should taxi the full length of the runway was the problem (which led to the ATC query, "Are you able to continue to the runway?").
They were not at the end of the runway yet, and just stopped their taxi in the middle of the taxiway for no apparent reason. There's no real "standard phraseology" for ATC to say, "Hey crew - you're only about halfway towards where you need to be. Why did you stop?"
Then, the crew misinterpreted the clearance to continue FOR the runway as a clearance to taxi ONTO the runway (Newark ATC: "Turkish 4YT heavy, are you able to continue for the runway?” Turkish pilot: “Affirmative.” Newark ATC: “Okay, continue for the runway.") Standard phraseology or not, pilots should know the difference between "for" and "onto". Able to speak and understand English is a requirement of the license, precisely because situations can arise when controllers and crews need to go "off script".
And that clearance IS appropriate if you still haven't taxied all the way to the runway. Which they hadn't. Besides, ALL clearances to taxi onto, depart from, land on, or cross a runway will name the runway. 100% of the time. No exceptions. This one didn't name any runway ("Okay, continue for the runway") - so it clearly WASN'T a clearance to taxi onto Runway 4L.
So now the crew is wrong about two things. 1) They thought they were at the correct takeoff point (they weren't), and 2) they thought "continue for the runway" meant they were cleared onto it (it doesn't).
Had they replied with something that clarified the clearance they think they just received, like, "Okay, continue for, and line up and wait runway 4L" this all wouldn't have happened. So if we are going to only point at "standard phraseology!" as the culprit, a big part of the responsibility to use it also rests on a crew, too. Instead, they just parroted back what they heard. That's a terrible habit when unsure about a clearance you just received.
Next, the "slight technical difficulty" was now caused by the A350 alerting them that they didn't have enough runway distance (performance) based on their weight, flap setting, anticipated power setting, etc. from where they entered the runway. They still didn't know they were in the wrong place. The plane basically alerted them to a significant error and prevented a potential disaster. The F/O (on the radio) even seemed to believe they needed permission to depart from intersection "AA" which is, per the US FAA rules, the normal departure point for a runway with a displaced threshold as depicted on the charts. They were still a bit confused.
The crew messed up. They didn't understand where to depart from, didn't get a standard clearance to enter the runway, didn't clarify with ATC in their response that they could taxi onto runway 4L, and were still confused when they needed to exit the runway.
Even if ATC, at the beginning and after querying about the crew stopping, had said, "continue taxi to runway 4L" (standard phraseology) it's probable the crew would have still entered the runway in their confusion.
As a pilot, I hate to say it - but this one is on the crew.