An Austrian Airlines plane landed at Montreal-Trudeau airport without permission from tower control on Monday afternoon. Very rarely, they occur without benefit.
“A Boeing 767-300 operated by Austrian Airlines” [en provenance] of Vienna […] landed without touching the tower,” reads the official brief for the incident.
Very rare
“It’s a very rare event and it’s good that it’s being explored,” Jean Lapointe, a former pilot and aviation expert, told the Journal yesterday.
“The Austrian leaders will have to explain themselves. They have a good reason, but in general; [les autorités] you want to know what happened and why.
“Did they set the wrong radio frequency or did they think they were clearing out when they didn’t?” asked Lord Lapointe.
Relatively safe
He said, “I don’t think it’s very dangerous,” he said.
“If the pilots had been informed that there was no one on the bridge and in fact they had a radio failure, it would have been more dangerous to go around and return to the airport without being able to communicate,” said the expert.
Jean Lapointe reminded that before the tower touched the ground Montréal-Trudeau, the pilots of the commercial aircraft first communicated with the regional center, also located in Montréal.
Penalties are possible
If this step was observed, the Austrian Airlines plane was equipped with the aircraft preparing to land in Montreal. Not out of nowhere.
At the end of the investigation, the Austrians could force the pilots in question to follow the training session, said Jean Lapointe. If the situation is deemed serious enough, Canada could impose fines on them as well.
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