A 23,500-hour pilot – volunteering for a flying charity while furloughed from an airline job and unaccustomed to visual flight rules (VFR) departure procedures at Australia’s Bankstown Airport – entered an occupied runway instead of the parallel runway specified by air traffic control. An airport traffic controller cleared the pilot for takeoff before recognizing the error and telling the pilot to hold position.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), in its final report on the Oct. 26, 2021, occurrence, said the pilot of the Beech 58 probably erred because of expectation bias – which, according to a SKYbrary definition, “occurs when a pilot hears or sees something that he or she expects to hear or see rather than what actually may be occurring.” <>
In this case, the pilot had conducted a number of previous departures in the incident airplane from Bankstow…
