Description

On 18 December 2001, a Saab 2000 being operated by Air Botnia on scheduled passenger flight from Stockholm to Oulu was taxiing out at night in normal visibility in accordance with its ATC clearance when a car appeared from the left on a roadway and drove at speed on a collision course with the aircraft. In order to avoid a collision, the aircraft had to brake sharply and the aircraft commander saw the car pass under the nose of the aircraft and judged the vehicle’s closest distance to the aircraft to be four to five metres. The car did not stop, could not subsequently be identified and no report was made by the driver or other witnesses. The diagram below taken from the official report shows the site of the conflict - the aircraft was emerging from Ramp ‘G’ to turn left on taxiway ‘Z’ and the broken line shows the roadway which is crossed just before the left turn is commenced.

Investigation

Once they were notified of the event nearly three weeks after it had occurred, an Investigation was carried out by the Swedish AIB. The Investigation considered a fortunate coincidence that the aircraft commander looked to the left and saw the car approaching since there was no requirement for the flight crew of a taxiing aircraft to be aware of or check activity on airport roads.