Opinion: Don’t be too hard on Harrison Ford for landing his plane on a taxiway

To the editor: I am a 10,000-hour, airline-rated pilot and flight instructor. I have never landed on a taxiway, as actor Harrison Ford mistakenly did at John Wayne Airport, but I almost have a few times. (“Harrison Ford’s close call in another airplane mishap was unusual and troubling, experts say,” Feb. 15)

A number of airports in the Los Angeles area have multiple runways, often with a large one for the heavy planes and a smaller one for general aviation. Normally there are taxiways on each side of the two-runway complex and often a taxiway between the two. In that most of our airports were military fields, many of them have long, wide taxiways, built to handle World War II fighters and bombers.

Ford made a simple mistake and will undoubtedly get a reprimand of some kind. I hope the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t decide to make a high-profile example out of him and instead treats him as they would any of us in the same situation.

Darcy Vernier, Marina del Rey

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