Agree 100%. Prior to takeoff you Call to JFK tower to discuss that you crossed an active runway without permission and a airplane had to abort because of your actions.
Then you call AA duty pilot and explain situation, he calls CP on call and gives you the green light to proceed….enjoy the London layover. NTSB will determine if that was the correct decision.

As I said on the UAL forum - there but for the Grace of God go I. So, I'm definitely not one to throw stones, and this idea has no bearing on anything in particular, but the idea that they continued to LHR was troubling me until I thought about a scene from a documentary I watched last night. The documentary was Schumacher, a movie done about the life of Mike Schumacher and his F1 career. The part that struck me was when he hit another car. In that scene his car careened off the track and the other guy was able to continue on. Schumacher got out of his car and when he got to the pits he ran over to the other drivers pit to give him a tongue lashing. In Schumacher's mind the other driver hit him. He was certain of this right up until they showed him the video. In this case, I heard what I assume is the captain tell ATC something to the effect "we were cleared to cross". So . . . what I'm thinking is that the captain and likely by force of his belief the whole crew firmly believed the mistake was that of ATC and not their mistake. There's no way they could have learned the truth until someone played back the recording for them. If . . . if that's the case I can totally see them saying "boy that sucks for ATC and glad WE didn't mess up.

Anyways just a thought.

Not exonerating anyone, and personally I would STILL have called out saying my mind wasn't right, but that is a very personal call and not something you can fault someone else for not feeling.

Question-
Is the CVR able to record 8-10 hrs of cockpit audio of this event?
Just wondering, as if not (thought it was 30 mins to 2 hours worth) the crew may have removed a very important piece of learning information.

Thank God this wasn’t worse. No one wants to end up on the news (and now Forums!). We MUST learn from this and educate so it doesn’t happen again (though, we know it probably will.. unfortunately)

Fly Safe, everyone ~
Motch

Agree with all that. And like most studies of people that are in high stimulation/high threat environments and something went wrong, the individual internal "after action" report/memory/recall of events can vary widely of what one thought they saw/heard vs what really happened.

And yeah, they WERE cleared to cross;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNqGSNw67H8

But yeah, sucks for them, all three of them. Glad it didn't end up much worse and hopefully a learning experience for all involved.

That was my first thought. If the CVR picked up a blatant sterile violation, would that affect/negate your ASAP. I honestly don’t know. Not saying it happened here, but taking off would erase all evidence. Like someone said, there by the Grace of God goes I. Just glad everyone’s ok.

The linked ATC audio instructs AA106 to cross 31L at Kilo, which would have been a right turn, and the correct turn, in order to takeoff on 4L. Instead, AA106 crossed 4L.

They turned left then right on J and then crossed!

They incorrectly crossed 4L. They were instructed to cross 31L on K, which was a hard right turn. The departure runway 4L can't even be reached if they went across 4L

all these senior papas “Let me listen in on your PA to the passengers so you don’t say the wrong thing”

When in reality this defeats the purpose of the new changes to prevent the issue that just happened. They want the CA focused on the Taxi so, ya know, they don’t turn the wrong way and nearly cause an accident. But man, so many of these CAs are micro managers and don’t trust their FOs with a simple stupid PA… they forget most of the FOs were regional captains and check airman for years….

No doubt for some of AA’s Captains, but you are throwing out a strong, unwarranted implication of what may have transpired in that flight deck based solely on your opinion of how some captains micromanage the flight deck.

There were three working pilots in there - all based at that airport. Somehow all three failed to comprehend the taxi instruction and instead of turning right and crossing 31L, they all allowed the pilot controlling the tiller to cross an entirely different runway.