FAA Approves Air Canada Safety Review

The FAA says it's satisfied by measures undertaken by Transport Canada and Air Canada to address a couple of serious errors by Air Canada crews at San Francisco International Airport in 2017. In July, an Airbus A320 came close to landing on a taxiway occupied by four widebody airliners waiting to take off and in October another Air Canada A320 crew had their radio on the wrong frequency and didn't hear repeated orders from the tower to abort their landing. After the close calls, Air Canada and Transport Canada worked out a deal to increase training and surveillance of Airbus operations and do a review of operations at SFO. It's also doing a general safety and operational review of the whole airline. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor told the Toronto Star the agency "is satisfied with the actions (Transport Canada and Air Canada) have taken."

Air Canada's troubles have also shined a light on some other runway-related incidents at SFO in the past year. Last week an Aeromexico Boeing 737 lined up on the wrong runway and had to go around over a Virgin America Airbus waiting for takeoff clearance on the runway. A Compass Airlines flight had to abort after it was cleared to land on a runway occupied by a Virgin America plane and a SkyWest flight crossed the hold line as another aircraft was taking off.