Jet pilot ‘saw lawnmower on runway

A STARTLED pilot involved in a late-night near miss at Dublin Airport radioed air traffic controllers to tell them he thought he saw a lawnmower on a runway, it was revealed last night.

After the Boeing 737 carrying about 200 people from an Egyptian resort touched down, the co-pilot told colleagues he “noticed a lawnmower too close to the runway edge lighting”.

The plane’s wing tip passed a few metres over the head of a maintenance man on the ride-on machine just after landing.

The incident happened in thick fog on May 29 last year at 1.53am after Dublin Airport Authority sent out three teams to cut grass along runways.

During the air accident investigation one supervisor told how he had heard of workers being told in training to ride mowers down the centre landing line when on the runway.

The driver of the lawnmower involved in the near miss had minutes earlier been asked to leave the airfield because of poor visibility, but not because of the danger of landing aircraft.

The worker had not been linked by radio to air traffic control, did not have warning lights on the machine and was wearing ear defenders.

The Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) report said the use of runways by grass-cutting personnel to return to base was “poor practice”, while there were “significant deficiencies” in the rules governing the movement of staff in the manoeuvring area of the airport.

The radar system in use at the time at Dublin Airport also failed to detect the presence of the grass mower on the runway.

Three grass-cutting machines began work close to the runway at 11pm.

At 1.47am, a supervisor was instructed to inform his staff to halt all activity due to the decreasing visibility at the airport.

The supervisor told the AAIU he told the driver of the ride-on mower by hand-held radio to return to base and subsequently informed air traffic controllers that all machines had “vacated the field”.

However, the driver said he had been instructed to “vacate the runway area” because of low visibility and had no idea an aircraft was due to land.

The report found the mower driver had assumed poor visibility was the sole reason his work was being stopped and that it was safe to return to his base along the runway.

Following the incident, eight new control measures were introduced by the DAA including a revision of grass-cutting procedures.

The DAA replaced the ride-on mower with a machine equipped with a flashing beacon and a radio to tune into air traffic control frequencies.

The report observed that a new, more sophisticated radar system, which would have alerted air traffic controllers about the potential danger, was still being tested at the time and did not come fully into operation until October 2009.