C1/2004L Incident between two aircraft at Rovaniemi airport on 14 January 2004

On Wednesday January 14, 2004, at 14:41 Finnish time there was an aircraft incident at Rovaniemi airport between a training fighter Hawk MK 51A taking off and a fighter F-18C Hornet taxiing over the runway.

It was slowly snowing at Rovaniemi airport at the time of incident. The sun had set at 14.26 o’clock and there was low cloud. It was dusk and instrument meteorological conditions prevailed. Military aircraft used the whole runway length for take off because the runway was slippery. The tower controller had cleared a Hawk formation G31 (three aircraft) to taxi from holding position Golf via runway 03 to line up runway 21. At the same time O71 (two F-18) were cleared to taxi to holding position Juliet and over runway 21 to holding position Echo. The controller assumed G31 would be ready for take off when the first F-18 had crossed the runway and he ordered the second F-18 to hold at Juliet. After this G31 was cleared for take off. They took off one by one. The controller followed that O72 stops at the holding position Juliet. At the same time he gave route clearances to the aircraft departing next and control zone traffic information to the radar controller. The controller did not count the number of Hawks taking off but instead followed them “from the corner of his eye”. He looked at the runway to see if all the Hawks had taken off. The runway seemed to be empty and accordingly the controller gave O72 clearance to taxi across the runway. When O72 was taxiing across the runway, the third Hawk G33 was starting its take off roll. The pilot of G33 noticed the F-18 taxiing in front of him and aborted the take off. The controller simultaneously noticed the situation and ordered G33 to stop. Also the pilot of O72 noticed the approaching Hawk and accelerated taxiing to hurry over the runway. The filament of the taxi/approach light of last Hawk, G33, had been burned which impaired its visibility under the prevailing conditions.

The investigators found out that the controller knew there were three aircraft in the formation G31 taking off one by one at approximately 20 seconds intervals. As the formation took off the controller did not count the number of aircraft taking off and did not sufficiently secure that the runway was free before giving O72 clearance to taxi across the runway. The last Hawk G33 of the formation had problems to steer to the take off heading due to the slippery runway, and thus its take off roll began approximately 25 later than normally. The pilot did not report to tower his delay for take off. Also, it did not have an operating taxi/approach light and it was thus nearly impossible to obtain visual contact to it from the control tower under the prevailing conditions.

The cause of the incident was the controller giving O72 the clearance to taxi across the runway without securing that all Hawks had already taken off. Contributing factors were, that the visual limitation to see with eyesight only a dark aircraft against a dark background, especially without an operating taxi/approach light and that the pilot did not informed tower that he will be late for take off.

The comments received to the final draft of the investigation report have been taken into account in the final version.

C1/2004L Report (pdf, 0.56 Mt)