A Boeing 737-800 from Japan Airlines was about to take off from Tokyo Haneda Airport on Monday. The departure did not go smoothly.
The airline stated in a press release that the aircraft accelerated but came to a stop halfway down the runway. The cause of the stop is still under investigation by Japan Airlines. The Boeing taxied back to the gate under its own power, where the eighty passengers were able to disembark.
The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism provided more details about the incident. The 737 pilots are said to have run over part of the runway lighting during takeoff. Flight data shows that after the aircraft turned onto the runway, it was not aligned directly with the runway but was instead lined up with the runway lights on the side.
Schiphol
A similar incident occurred at Schiphol years ago. In 2018, an Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia, a twin-engine turboprop aircraft, took off from the Kaagbaan for a flight to London Stansted. The pilots didn’t realize that during acceleration, they had hit seven runway lights. It wasn’t until they arrived at the English airport that they discovered damage to the aircraft. It was later determined that the aircraft had been misaligned on the runway.
Airshow
In 2023, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber destroyed as many as eighteen runway lights during an airshow at RAF Fairford. The aircraft demonstrated a remarkable feature during the backtrack, known as crabwalk. The bomber is capable of turning all its wheels at a twenty-degree angle, allowing it to taxi sideways. The additional wheels at the wing tips of the B-52 hit the lights one by one, breaking them.