NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Air taxi Captain reported during departure taxi another aircraft taxied toward them at a high rate of speed and did not give way as instructed by ATC. The Captain applied brakes firmly to avoid a collision.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
We were cleared to taxi via Charlie to cross 4L and hold short of 4R. This took us across Taxiway Bravo. We were taxiing at a slow rate and conducting the before take off checklist and run up flow. Aircraft Y taxied towards us on Bravo at a high rate of speed. They had not been mentioned in our clearance. I hit the brakes. My First Officer asked the Controller which aircraft was meant to give way, and the Controller indicated that Aircraft Y was supposed to have given way to us. Since we had come to a complete stop, and to ensure our safety, we gave way to them. The Controller apologized. I believe he may have not believed we would be near each other since we were taxiing slowly and conducting a checklist, while Aircraft Y was taxiing quickly. As Aircraft Y was using a medevac call sign, he may have assumed we were giving way to him. I believe the Controller may have thought there was no chance we would approach the Bravo/Charlie intersection at the same time. He may have been over tasked as well. I did not hear Aircraft Y's clearance, I don't know if "give way to Aircraft X" was mentioned. In this case having two pilots and taxiing slowly helped to prevent a near miss. The taxi is a very high workload time, as Boston is busy and the run up, brief and checklists must be executed while maintaining a look out.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- ATC Issue
- Conflict
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Human Factors · Procedure
- Primary Problem
- Ambiguous
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.