A Southwest Airlines flight Thursday from Florida’s Orlando International Airport to New York’s Albany International Airport had to take off hours late in a second plane after the first tried to take off from a taxiway instead of a runway.
As opposed to runways, which planes use to build up momentum before going airborne and to slow down upon landing, taxiways are used to transport planes on the ground to various parts of an airport, such as between gates and to hangars.
Southwest Flight 3278 began its takeoff roll at around 9:30 a.m. when an air traffic controller in Orlando noticed the flight crew’s error and had the takeoff aborted, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The taxiway in this instance runs parallel to the runway at the Orlando airport, the FAA said.
“Southwest Airlines Flight 3278 stopped safely on a taxiway at Orlando International Airport this morning after the crew mistook the surface for the nearby runway. … The airline accommodated customers on another aircraft to their intended destination of Albany,” the air carrier said in a statement, according to WOFL-TV.
Nobody was injured as a result of the mix-up.
Ultimately, Flight 3278 left Orlando on that second plane at about 1:10 p.m., three hours and 45 minutes after it was initially scheduled to depart, according to tracking website FlightAware.
