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It has been said that the chain of events leading to an aviation accident is made up of many actions, and, in retrospect, the accident might have been averted if one or more of those actions would have been handled differently.
If that is the case, the Nov. 22, 1994, runway incursion and collision involving Trans World Airlines Flight 427 and a chartered Cessna 441 at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport that killed both the pilot and his passenger aboard the Cessna should never have occurred.
That was the message heard April 19 at a board of inquiry conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board into the circumstances surrounding the accident and the steps the Federal Aviation Administration is taking to prevent future such incursions {see separate article, below}.
Lambert has three parallel east-west runways, 30 Right, 30 Left and 31. The accident occurred on Runway 30 Right, to which the TWA McDonnell Douglas MD-82 had been cleared to take off and on which the Superior Aviation Cessna had landed approximately 18 minutes earlier.
The first link in the chain of events leading to the collision was the fact that Runway 31 is used as both a taxiway and a runway for departures only, primarily for general aviation and commuter operators. When taxi instructions are given to arriving aircraft and Runway 31 is not in use,...