Guest Editorial: Air Canada, FAA hindered investigation of SFO near-miss

This editorial is from the San Jose Mercury News:

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Air Canada hindered the investigation of last month's near-catastrophe at San Francisco Airport by dragging their feet in the aftermath.

As a result, key evidence from the cockpit voice recorder was erased, and the pilots were never tested for drugs or alcohol. It's a bureaucratic cover-up that conveniently protects the federal agency and the airline involved.

The fiasco highlights the need for new federal laws or regulations mandating immediate reporting of near-misses and the grounding of aircraft and pilots until after National Transportation Safety Board investigators are called in.

This could have been nearly the worst aviation disaster in history, second only to the two hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

On July 7, pilots of an Air Canada plane landing minutes before midnight at SFO mistook a taxiway for the runway where they were supposed to land. The latest investigative findings show the plane dipped as low as 59 feet off the ground as the pilots aborted their landing, barely missing four fully-fueled aircraft with an estimated 1,000 passengers that were awaiting takeoff.

The FAA, which was responsible for having only one air controller working traffic in the tower at the time, took more than 24 hours to notify the NTSB. The delay allowed Air Canada to use the plane for three flights in which the cockpit recorder was taped over multiple times.

That recorder held potentially critical information about what the pilots were saying as they headed straight for the taxiway. The cockpit conversation between the pilots might have helped explain their confusion.

As for the pilots, a source familiar with the current NTSB investigation told Bay Area News Group reporter Matthias Gafni that they spent the night in the Bay Area and flew out the next morning on their normally scheduled flight.

It was business as usual, despicable behavior on the part of Air Canada, which refuses to answer questions during the investigation, including whether the pilots have since been grounded. United Airlines' outrageous response after a passenger was dragged off a plane pales in comparison to this stonewalling.

Similarly, the FAA refuses to explain why it took more than a day to notify the NTSB. The NTSB, in turn, excuses all this by noting that federal rules did not require that it be notified because there was no collision.

That technical rationalization belies common sense. Air Canada Flight 759 came within a few dozen feet and a few seconds of creating an airport inferno the likes of which this nation has never seen.

Jim Hall, former NTSB chairman, told Gafni that those reporting guidelines should be addressed in the investigation. “This was probably the most significant near-miss we've had in this decade,” Hall said. “I think splitting hairs on this issue on an incident of this significance is a disservice to safety.”

He's right. The investigation into this terrifying episode should have started immediately.