ASDE is an effective Safety Net... if used

On 29 March 2014, a light aircraft being taxied by maintenance personnel at Calgary entered the active runway without clearance in good visibility at night as an aircraft was taking off. The 737 passed safely overhead. The Investigation found that the taxiing aircraft had taken a route completely contrary to the accepted clearance and that the engineer in control of the aircraft had not received any relevant training. Although the airport had ASDE in operation, a transponder code was not issued to the taxiing aircraft as required and stop bar crossing detection was not enabled at the time.

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