Here is a video shot by passenger looking out window CLICK HERE.
This happened today, on a TAROM charter flight, departing Bucharest, no casualties. Reports state a maintenance vehicle was left parked on the runway in heavy fog!!!
LiveLeak all videos merged into one, posted here on LiveLeak.
Sure sounds intentional! Somebody put that car there wanting a disaster to happen.
That was no accident as the person had to willfully get out of that car to go wherever they needed to go.
I cannot fathom any reason for willingly LEAVING a car parked on any runway at anytime.
Yeah, could have been a mechanical issue, but isn’t that what tower freq is for? Also a car could have easily been pushed off the runway to the side someway, somehow.
“Reports state a maintenance vehicle was left parked on the runway in heavy fog!!!”
First reports are quite often mistaken. We need to wait until more data comes out to see what happened, like if the car was intentionally left on the runway.
Can anyone here translate Romanian … I’m guessing that there was a miscommunication/disorientation between the airport vehicle and the tower… Willful intent might be a bit of a stretch at this point.
Bucharest - A Romanian passenger plane and a car collided on a runway at Bucharest airport on Sunday, but no one was hurt in the incident, airport officials said.
“This was a serious incident in which the plane was damaged,” said Valentin Iordache, a spokesperson for Bucharest’s Otopeni airport.
The Tarom airline Boeing 737-300 struck the car which was checking on runway lighting as visibility was poor due to thick fog.
“A disaster was avoided thanks to the crew’s professionalism,” said Tarom’s managing director Gheorghe Barla.
The 120 passengers who were headed for Egypt were evacuated via chutes.
The transport ministry ordered an investigation to establish why the privately owned car was on the runway.
Barla said the vehicle had been “forgotten” and the control tower did not know about it.
The Realitatea TV network showed footage of the plane’s broken landing gear.
A translated report stated two maintenance men were working on runway lighting, and hadn’t informed the tower they were even there.
I would’ve liked to have seen the looks on the faces of the “maintenance men” as they’re minding their business, working away, as the crescendo of an airliner pierces the fog and runs over their vehicle…
Thankfully no one was hurt… Only the coffer of some insurance co.
Just a note regarding LiveLeak, though statements can be correct, it is merely the statement of the person who downloaded it onto the LiveLeak website.
However with that said, a partial translation of what I could find, is the vehicle had been on the runway with ATC clearance twice that day, and somehow the message wasn’t passed on the third time. The driver stated he could not be on the runway without clearance, so somewhere it was lost in communication. They stated they were near their car when they heard the engines spooling up, and ran.