I exaggerated my position to make a point and people have properly taken me to task. I was only trying to inject some balance into the discussion by pointing out that the a/c was holding and had the offending vehicle in sight. Yes it was a runway incursion and all runway incursions are dangerous. But it was not an incursion in front of an a/c which had commenced take off roll, and I feel that the thread title wrongly conveys that impression.
As I understand what happened, the Tenerife disaster (which was truly a tragic catastrophe) was caused by a combination of fog, a highly experienced but impatient KLM pilot who commenced his take off roll without clearance, and by a comms clash which prevented him hearing the Pan Am a/c advise him that they were still taxiing toward him on the active RWY looking for their exit. There's an order of magnitude discrepancy between that and the Indian runway incursion, but I accept that the latter could have had a much more serious outcome if the a/c had commenced its take off roll and the fact that it hadn't seems to have simply been fortuitous.
Thanks for the "Toby" moniker - hopefully it won't stick!
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Philip
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