A Turkish Airlines Airbus A330-300 flying from Newark, New Jersey to Istanbul, Turkey, rejected takeoff after the plane's crew members were advised that they were on Newark’s taxiway P. This incident occurred on flight TK30, which departed just after midnight on Saturday, August 7th.
Transatlantic mission
The A330 was given clearance for takeoff from the airport's runway 22R at insection with taxiway W. However, according to The Aviation Herald, the widebody crossed runway 22R and lined up with taxiway P to begin its takeoff. Subsequently, staff in the control tower canceled the clearance and informed the pilots that the plane was on taxiway P.
The flight crew then rejected takeoff at approximately 90 knots (166 km/h) over ground before slowing down and turning right onto taxiway E. The A330 then crossed 22R again before joining taxiway B. Here, the crew was told to taxi to the holding point on runway 11 by taxiway W.
The brakes had to cool down here for 45 minutes. After the plane was ready to go again, it taxied along runway 11 before lining up at 22R for it to finally depart an hour after the rejection.
The aircraft
According to ch-aviation, Turkish Airlines holds 64 Airbus A330 family aircraft. These are split between 14 -200s, 10 -200Fs, and 40 -300s.
TC-JNI, the unit involved in last weekend's incident, arrived at the operator's facilities on October 13th, 2010. The airline was the first to take on the 10-year old deploying it to the likes of Dubai, Stockholm. Kabul, Düsseldorf, Baku, and Boston, to name a few destinations.
In regard to the airline's wider fleet, it is weighing up the future of its Boeing 737 MAX situation. The carrier reduced orders of the jet to 25 from 75 last year. However, it may be able to still restore many of the orders of options. Overall, the company has until the end of 2021 to make a decision on whether to firm up its orders.
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An active period
Altogether, the A330 departing Newark last week landed safely in Istanbul after a 100-minute delay. There are no reports of any injuries during the incident.
Turkish Airlines had had a busy summer in comparison to the downturn following the complications of the global health crisis. Last month, the carrier performed over 1,000 flights in a day for the first time since the pandemic. It operated 1,253 flights a day between July 8th to 14th to reach 85% of its 2019 activity. The firm will undoubtedly be hoping to prevent any further incidents like what happened last week from occurring again.
Simple Flying reached out to Turkish Airlines for comment on this incident. We will update the article with any further announcements from the airline.
What are your thoughts about this Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 incident? Have you experienced anything similar when traveling over the years? Let us know what you think of the overall situation in the comment section.