Deadliest Airplane crash caught on CCTV

2 years ago
18

I was curious why all the confusion over which runway they were landing on ('20' or '02'). After reading the accident report, it is because while waiting for "02" to become visible they flew past the airport without realizing it. When they came back from the other direction, they were headed toward runway "20". The crew did not actually confuse "02" and "20". They just were completely lost and confused - zero situational awareness. Nevertheless, it struck me as interesting that a runway numbered "20" would always be runway "02" in the opposite direction (because of the standardized convention of numbering runways based on their compass heading with the least significant digit lopped off). This is not news to many people. But there is something unique about this particular runway configuration among all the possible pairs of runway numbers. The number "2", owing to the way it is painted on tarmac, looks the same right-side-up as it does upside-down. I looked at this airport on google maps, curious if there's any way a crew could mistake "02" and "20". What I decided was that, while highly unlikely, I suppose a pilot losing situational awareness could in a dyslexic moment think he was landing on "02" when he was actually approaching "20". Therefore, to minimize the chance of this happening, I would think an airport would NOT paint "02" on the tarmac, but rather just a "2" ... this would lessen any chance of a mixup. I know at the airport I usually fly out of, there is a single digit runway "4" ... it does NOT have a leading zero. But, as seen in google maps, the Katmandu runway 2 is painted "02". Might be wise to just paint a "2". Just something that occurred to me while reading about this accident.

Loading comments...