AN INVESTIGATION into a serious incident involving a Dublin-bound passenger jet carrying Irish golfer Pádraig Harrington has established that the crew tried to take off along the edge of the runway instead of in the middle.
A preliminary report into the incident, released by the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority yesterday, confirmed that the crew attempted to take off after mistaking the runway edge lights for the centre line lights.
The January 29th incident involved Etihad Airways flight EY-45, which was taking off from Abu Dhabi and destined for Dublin. It had 216 passengers and 13 crew on board.
Harrington was among the passengers on the Airbus A330-200 jet with his caddie, Ronan Flood. They were returning to Ireland from the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship.
The aircraft was accelerating along the runway in low visibility when the crew was forced to abort the take-off after one of the jet’s nose wheel tyres burst.
The aircraft came to a safe stop on the runway and was later towed to the apron where the passengers disembarked normally. The jet was grounded while the passengers were left stranded for a further 12 hours before being flown home to Dublin.
During an inspection of the runway, it was discovered that 11 lights along the edge of the runway had been destroyed, while tyre debris was also found. As a result, the runway was closed for almost six hours.
Investigators have established that the aircraft had been cleared to line up on runway 31L in low visibility and darkness.
The crew was following the yellow taxi line normally illuminated by about 30 green taxi centre-line lights, which the crew could not see.
After following the yellow line for about 157m, the crew turned left off the taxi line and actually aligned with the left-hand runway edge lights instead of the runway centre line lights.
Shortly after the take-off run was initiated, the nose gear rolled over 11 runway edge lights with the left main gear almost five metres to the left of the left runway edge.
The investigation to date has concluded: “The probable cause of the serious incident was the impact with the runway nearest PAPI light after incorrect line-up with the runway edge line instead of centre line. The incorrect line-up was due to the crew confusion between the runway centre and edge lights.
“Contributing factor to the serious incident was that neither of the two pilots realised the misalignment situation due to that their situational awareness was overwhelmed by activities not enabling them to have adequate peripheral vision outside the cockpit.”