A passenger jet came seconds from disaster when pilots attempted to take off before the aircraft had reached the runway in a rare error.
A Scandinavian airliner carrying 165 people at Brussels airport reached 125mph on a narrow and relatively short taxiway alongside the runway. The pilots slammed on the brakes when they realised they had made a mistake.
At 10pm on Thursday night the crew of the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Airbus A320 brought the 70-tonne airliner to an emergency halt yards from the end of the taxiway and stopped near the airport’s fuel storage tanks.
The passengers were disembarked by emergency services after a 90-minute wait on the taxiway and flight SK259 to Copenhagen was cancelled. “The take-off of a SAS aircraft was aborted,” Ariane Goossens, a spokeswoman for Brussels airport, said. SAS told Danish media that the take-off had been halted and an “irregularity” had taken place. There were no injuries.
Belgian investigators are trying to determine how the pilots confused the taxiway, one of the distinctively lit road-like paths that aircraft use to move around the surface of airports at slow speed, for Runway 07 Right, the long, northeast east-facing take-off runway at the airport.
Data transmitted from the aircraft and relayed online showed that it was travelling at about 125mph, close to its take-off speed of about 170mph when the pilots realised they were on taxiway “Echo”.
“The aircraft stopped just short of the airport’s fuel tanks,” the Aviation Herald news site reported.
Brussels airport
AMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/BELGA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The pilots realised their mistake about 40 seconds after receiving their clearance to take off from the Zaventem control tower, according to air traffic control recordings relayed on aviation sites. “We are OK, but something went very wrong,” one of the two pilots told controllers.
The captain told passengers that the crew had been obliged to perform “an “intense braking manoeuvre” as a result of using the taxiway, according to Danish television.
Anders Bork Hansen, a passenger, told the TV2 channel that the experience was frightening. He added that the plane suddenly juddered to a halt as it was about to become airborne. “Just as we had gained so much speed that we were about to lift off, the brakes were slammed on, all the flaps on the wings opened, and the engines were put into reverse so that everything was shaking,” he said.
Another passenger said: “We were picking up speed, and then suddenly, there was this violent deceleration. You could feel the force of the engines and the brakes working against each other.”
“It felt like we were seconds away from a catastrophe,” another witness added.
The Belgian emergency services provided psychological support to the passengers after their long wait for evacuation.
A spokeswoman for SAS confirmed to Danish media that the flight was cancelled after the aborted take-off and that all passengers were accommodated on alternative flights.
There have been several incidents around the world in recent years of airline crews confusing taxiways with runways, despite their distinctive markings and appearances, but the errors were spotted earlier and none came so close to taking off.
Luk de Wilde, a Belgian aviation expert, said: “It would have taken at most three or four more seconds before reaching a speed where the plane would have had to take off. However, I think the taxiway is too short for that, and the plane would likely have gone into the grass or crashed.”
“It’s a mystery to me as well because this is extremely rare,” De Wilde told Het Nieuwsblad, the Belgian national newspaper. “Everything points to a mistake by both pilots — the captain and the co-pilot. This could have had disastrous consequences.”
“That both of them failed to notice they were on a taxiway rather than a runway is very remarkable and exceptional,” De Wilde added.
Taxiways have blue lights on the edges and sometimes green lights down the centre. Runways have white lights on the edges and white and red lights down the centre. Taxiways are not built to withstand the force or speed of a departing aircraft and they very often have other aircraft or ground vehicles on them.
In an incident in Orlando, Florida, last March, a Southwest Boeing 737 mistook a taxiway for the runway and began accelerating. The crew realised the error at 75mph and halted the plane. At Chicago O’Hare in 2022, controllers ordered a Viva Aerobus airlines Airbus to halt just after it began accelerating on a taxiway.