Description

On 19 October 2009, a BOEING 767-300ER being operated by Delta Airlines on a scheduled passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro to Atlanta inadvertently made a landing at destination in night Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) on parallel taxiway ‘M’ instead of the intended and ATC-cleared landing runway 27R. None of the 194 occupants were injured and there was no damage to the aircraft or conflict with other traffic or vehicles. The third rostered crew member had become incapacitated en route with the consequence that neither of the other pilots had been able to take any in flight rest.

Investigation

An investigation was carried out by the National Transportation Safety Board (USA) (NTSB). Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and 2 hour Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) data were available to the Investigation.

It was established that three flight crew had been on board with the third being a Check Captain overseeing the operating Captain for the purposes of his obtaining a special airport qualification. It is not clear from the report whether a third pilot was automatically required or customarily rostered to fulfil crew duty requirements but it is clear that this was the intention on this flight. Normal practice is reported to have been to divide the estimated time in the cruise into three equal parts and rest accordingly. The flight was expected to take around 10 hours and in the event landed around 10 hours and 10 minutes after the off gate time.