WASHINGTON. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials in Washington have opened a public docket and released images and a stunning video as part of its ongoing investigation of the 7 July 2017 Air Canada overflight of a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport.
Air Canada flight 759, an Airbus A320 commercial passenger jet, was cleared to land on runway 28R at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), but the aircraft lined up on parallel taxiway C, which had four airplanes on it awaiting takeoff clearance. Air Canada flight 759 descended below 100 feet above the ground and initiated a go-around after overflying the first airplane on taxiway C.
The top portion of this not-to-scale NTSB graphic, created from Harris Symphony OpsVue radar track data analysis, depicts the positions of aircraft on an overhead view of the runways and taxiways at San Francisco International Airport. The text is from a transmission to air traffic control from a United Airlines airplane on the taxiway. The bottom photo, taken from San Francisco International Airport video, shows Air Canada Flight 759 passing over the first United Airlines airplane.
The docket includes factual reports for operations, human performance, air traffic control, aircraft performance, and the flight data recorder, as well as contains a video that shows the overflight, interview summaries, photographs, and other investigative material.
The docket contains only factual information collected by NTSB investigators. No conclusions about how or why the overflight occurred should be drawn from the information in the docket, as the investigation is ongoing. Analysis, findings, recommendations, and probable cause determinations related to the incident will be issued by the NTSB at a later date.
The docket material is available online at https://go.usa.gov/xQ8Mp. Additional material may be added to the docket as it becomes available.
