Incident: Delta Airlines B763 at Atlanta on Oct 19th 2009, landed on taxiway

[atcman23]

The runway would need to be equipped with the REILS and if it was, chances are if the approach lights were off, the REILS were probably off too.

[jonnevin]

It is very easy to say that this never should have happened, because, of course, it shouldn't have. But armchair quarterbacking from the low stress environment behind a computer screen is easy to do.

What is relevant about this is that it is yet another case of a chain of events leading up to an unfortunate result, not one thing.

1) long int'l flight)
2) perhaps higher stress flight throughout due to check pilot presence
3) check pilot gets ill, my understanding is that he physically got ill on the flight deck and you can imagine the distraction the remnants of  that would cause
4) landing dark
5) runway lighting system not standard
6) relatively last minute runway change
7) no other planes on the taxiway to give away that it was in fact a taxiway
busy tower that was unable to notice the error happening.

[mk]

not busy in the predawn hours of the morning...and unless you had eagle eyes, it would be nearly impossible if not impossible to tell from the tower if an airplane were lined up for a runway or 200ft right of the runway.

[jonnevin]

Agreed that's it a slow time of day at ATL, but
that's still relatively busy to other fields.

Wasn't referring to visually noticing flight off
center but rather via the radar where it would
be quite obvious it was off localizer centerline.