Investigators looking into the frighteningly close call involving an airliner that nearly hit planes on the ground at San Francisco International Airport will try to determine why the pilots made such a rookie mistake and nearly landed on a busy taxiway instead of the runway. The Air Canada plane with 140 people aboard came within 100 feet of crashing onto the first two of four passenger-filled planes readying for takeoff. Runways are edged with rows of white lights, and another system of lights on the side of the runway helps guide pilots on their descent. By contrast, taxiways have blue lights on the edges and green lights down the center. "The lighting is different for good reason," said Steven Wallace, a former director of accident investigations at the FAA. "Some of these visual mistakes are hard to believe, but a crew gets fixated with thinking 'That's the runway,' and it's not." Then there is the radio transmission in which one of the Air Canada pilots sounded puzzled about seeing what appeared to be the lights of other planes on the runway. Safety experts said that should have prompted the crew to abort their approach long before they did. Pilots said so-called glide slope technology in modern airliners also should have helped the crew find the runway unless they failed to set it up as they approached the airport. "This was a clear crew error with many facets, I suspect," said Alan Price, a former chief pilot for Delta. When investigators interview the pilots, they will focus on understanding how mistakes occurred "and why they did not realize the sequence of errors," said John Cox, a safety consultant and former airline pilot. Investigators will look at the pilots' use of automated-flying systems, their manual flying skills, and how they interacted with each other as uncertainty set in, he said. An Air Canada spokeswoman said she could not comment because the incident is under investigation. She declined to describe the amount of experience of the pilots.<br/>
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THAI will seek cabinet approval to acquire 28 more passenger aircraft for delivery over the next five years. Montri Chamrieng, VP for strategy and sustainable development, said the board of directors has approved the five-year strategic plan to replace retired planes. Nineteen of the aircraft would be for use by Thai Airways, and nine for its subsidiary THAI Smile. This would maintain the overall size of the in-service fleet at 100 aircraft. It was still to be decided whether to purchase or lease the planes. The board also approved a new route between Bangkok and Vienna in Austria, commencing around Oct 30. The airline will have four flights a week on this route with a projected load factor of 75%. Approval was based on the potential of the route, as Vienna could be THAI’s network hub for eastern Europe. <br/>