Jetgo E135 at Tamworth on Aug 28th 2016, takeoff without runway lights
Last Update: January 17, 2017 / 16:22:59 GMT/Zulu time
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Aug 28, 2016
Classification
Incident
Airline
Jetgo
Flight number
JG-65
Departure
Tamworth, Australia
Destination
Brisbane, Australia
Aircraft Registration
VH-JTG
Aircraft Type
Embraer ERJ-135
ICAO Type Designator
E135
Australia's TSB have rated the occurrence an incident and opened an investigation.
On Jan 17th 2017 the ATSB released their final report releasing following findings:
- The crew did not activate the airport lighting and did not detect that the lighting was off prior to the take-off run.
- Available lighting from the aircraft taxi and landing lights, a lack of crew expectation, a short taxi with high workload, and no assigned role or procedure to check for runway lighting resulted in the crew not detecting the lack of runway lights.
The ATSB reported that the aircraft taxied to the runway with the taxiway and runway lights not activated. The captain lined the aircraft and commenced takeoff, at about 70 knots the first officer detected that the runway lights were off and activated the lights using PAL (pilot activated lighting).
The ATSB analysed:
The illumination provided by the aircraft taxi and landing lights made it difficult to detect that the PAL was not activated. Due to the rise on the taxiway, the crew would only have been able to see a few lights ahead of the aircraft, and these would have been illuminated by the aircraft lights. Adding to this, both crew did not have an expectation that the lights may have been extinguished as the cues available did not assist.
The auditory 10-minute PAL extinguishing warning could not be heard without headphones, and the windsock flashing light warning was not noticed as the crew obtained wind information using the flight crew electronic flight bag or AWIS.
As the company standard operating procedures did not assign a task of ensuring the runway lights were selected on to a specific role prior to taxi, there was also no procedural prompt to the crew.
The short taxi with a high workload further reduced the chance of detection.
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Aug 28, 2016
Classification
Incident
Airline
Jetgo
Flight number
JG-65
Departure
Tamworth, Australia
Destination
Brisbane, Australia
Aircraft Registration
VH-JTG
Aircraft Type
Embraer ERJ-135
ICAO Type Designator
E135
This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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