Incident: Royal Air Maroc B737 at Casablanca on Dec 22nd 2010, landed on taxiway

By Simon Hradecky, created Friday, Sep 16th 2011 16:46Z, last updated Friday, Sep 16th 2011 16:46Z A Royal Air Maroc Boeing 737-800, registration CN-ROL performing flight AT-296 from Yaounde (Cameroon) to Casablanca (Morocco), performed a VOR/DME approach to Casablanca's runway 17L at around 11:22L (11:22Z). After breaking out of clouds at 3000 feet MSL the crew requested and was cleared for a visual approach to runway 17L continuing visually in crosswinds of about 20 knots. The aircraft aligned with taxiway T and landed on the taxiway, that was not occupied by any other traffic at that time. The crew did not recognize their error until turning off the taxiway to taxi to the apron.

As result of the incident the airline's safety department proposed a number of safety recommendations to ONDA, Morocco's airport authority, including introduction of ILSs for runways 17, strobe lights at the runway threshold to make the runway threshold more recognizeable and an illuminated cross before the thresholds of taxiway T.

Morocco's Civil Aviation Authority is investigating.

A similiar occurrence had happened in 2009, see Incident: Jetairfly B738 at Casablanca on Mar 1st 2009, nearly landed on crowded taxiway

Source: http://avherald.com/h?article=44309421&opt=0