Region of Waterloo International Airport, Ontario, Canada

Airline at airport investigated after communication problem 

WATERLOO REGION — Arctic charter airline Nolinor was investigated by Transport Canada in March after one of its planes started rolling down the runway before a Region of Waterloo International Airport employee was out of the way.

Dave Morgan, director of charter operations with Nolinor, said there was miscommunication because the airport tower doesn't operate 24 hours a day.

"So we definitely realized that there was an issue there and as part of our investigation we issued an operations memo to our crews up there to better explain the operating procedures," he said.

The crew didn't hear the employee over the radio because they had already switched its frequency to communicate with Toronto.

According to civil aviation database records the incident occurred at about 5:55 a.m. on March 6.

An airport employee was working on Runway 08/26 when a Nolinor Boeing 737 positioned itself for takeoff.

The airport employee called the crew to say he was on the runway. But before he could clear out of the way, the employee heard the Boeing's engines spooling up.

Once out of the way, the employee saw the Nolinor flight was already well down the runway, the report says.

Morgan said Nolinor did its own internal investigation of the incident.

"The crew switched off of the Waterloo frequency prior to departure rather than as soon as they left the runway," Morgan said.

If the tower had been open, the crew would have communicated with regional tower staff, but because it was closed, they had already switched to a Toronto frequency.

"If you dig through any airport's files on any given day there's a certain number of miscommunication issues, especially at uncontrolled sites," Morgan said. "Typically they're miscommunications that are resolved long before they become a safety issue of any kind.

"Of course we take these things seriously — we pulled the voice recorders and worked with Navigation Canada and the airport to make sure that nothing like this happens again."

In April, a civil aviation safety inspector reported that the regional airport entered the incident into its safety management system for tracking and no further airport followup was required.

A similar incident was reported in April when a Nolinor flight taxied onto the runway for takeoff while snow removal equipment was on site and before the tower was open.

Airport staff heard Nolinor's radio calls and asked them to switch frequencies so they could warn the snow removal workers to clear the way. The Transport Canada report says they did so.

Communication problems with the tower may now arise less frequently, because on June 1 Nolinor moved its flight time an hour later to 7 a.m. after noise complaints from residents.  

Source:  http://www.therecord.com