Look Out "Chinese Taxi", It's The "Spanish Pushback"

Not to be outdone by those passengers who had to push their Chinese CRJ-700 from the runway to the terminal earlier this week, these Air Nostrum rampers show you how to do the "Spanish Pushback" in Seville. Amazingly, it's another CRJ. There must be a shortage of CRJ towbars overseas.

Thanks, JB.

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Passengers Have To Push Broken Plane Off Runway

Ghetto alert! You may want to think again about flying with this budget airline the next time you are traveling in China. After this CRJ-700 became disabled on the runway following its landing at Zhengzhou, the airline had no way of getting it off the runway and to the terminal. At first the crew from the Shandong Airlines flight and some airport staff tried to push it by themselves (yeah right). When that literally got them nowhere, passengers from the flight came to the rescue to help push the 20 ton beast 1,000 yards from where it died on the runway over toward the terminal building. It only took them two hours, too! I guess they've never heard of a tug and towbar in Zhengzhou?

[The Daily Mail via Fox News]

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Trainees Alone In Tower During Allentown Near Miss

So by now you may have heard about that Mesa CRJ-700 that almost hit a Cessna 172 on the runway in Allentown, PA recently. Well now AVweb is reporting that the only two controllers in the tower at Lehigh International Airport during the runway incursion were only trainees. One of the trainee controllers reportedly had instructed the Cessna, who had just landed, to exit the runway at a specific taxiway. The pilot advised the tower that he missed the exit and was going down to the next taxiway instead. The controller must have misinterpreted this as the pilot reporting that he had exited so he cleared the Mesa CRJ to take off from that same runway. What happened next was a guaranteed undie-messer as the CRJ had to "swerve" to miss the Cessna as it barreled down the runway at 120 knots coming within 10 feet of smashing into each other. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association is not disputing the facts of this incident but is hoping it builds on the case of an internal controller shortage, an issue sure to come up this Thursday during a House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on runway safety this. The Mesa flight (operating as United Express) was canceled after the incursion to deodorize the doodoo smell in the cabin.

[AVweb]

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