YIKES!
Ping
Man. The air traffic controllers were a little late. What do you want to bet the pilot had already spotted the plane and was taking evasive action?
It looks like the pilot of that Atlas 747 simply was not paying attention. How in the HECK do you roll over a hold-short line and onto an active runway like that?? I hope those Atlas fly-boys lost their jobs over that one. Only God Himself, intervening personally, prevented a disaster that day.
eep. That was close.
Whoa. That was a little too tight
Eek. I don't want to think about this too much. This is our home airport - my husband typically flies out of here about once a month. We live 15 miles from O'Hare!
Holy Schnikeys!
First, the crew of the United 737 does not seem to have done anything wrong. He was cleared to take off and did. There isn't enough information available in this animation (and the rest of the factual matter doesn't seem to be on NTSB's website), so it can't be determined whether the failure is the controllers', or the Atlas 747 crew.
This doesn't really matter, though, this business of right and wrong. In the worst accident ever, a runway incursion, the pilots of a Pan Am 747 were relatively blameless, and the pilot in command of a KLM 747 acted recklessly -- to the detriment of all in the KLM plane and many in the PA bird.
Second, if the time hack on the CVR is nominal, this did not happen during daylight, as depicted, but at three o'clock in the morning. There are two interesting things to note about that. A) it's dark and hard to see stuff and make out that a moving light in the distance is a threat, and B) this is the absolute low point in the circadian rhythm of any person adapted to a normal day shift.
Other than that, all I can say is... wow.
By the way, here's the direct link to the NTSB animation.
http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/2006/MostWantedFed/AnimationDescription.htm
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The airport is going to put in an AWOS with a radio repeater because of this.
Shortly after throttle-up for takeoff, our pilot slammed the thrust reversers on full and stood on the brakes. I looked out the window in time to see another a/c landing from our right -- timed just right for a T-bone at the intersection.
After our a/c had shuddered to a halt less than 100 yds from the crossover -- and we had scraped our foreheads off of the seatbacks in front of us, the captain came on the intercom:
"Folks, I apologize for Laguardia's dumb@$$ controllers. We are going to have to taxi back to the gate to check and see if we have flat-spotted our tires."
And then the First Officer chimed in:
"...and to change the Captain's trousers..."
OMG. That could have been a major tragedy. Thank God it turned out differently.
Scary stuff!