2011-04 · NASA ASRS report 945829
Recleared to land on 30R at SJC so a business jet could land on the left; the flight crew of a B-737 received a TCAS RA; but opted to continue and land; assuming the TCAS traffic was the aircraft which they had in sight. Flight crew were later remorseful for failing to follow SOP and respond to the RA.
We were cleared to land on 30L in SJC and then the clearance was changed to land on 30R. The Tower was going to land a corporate jet on 30L. The Tower pointed out the traffic to us and we picked up the traffic and the clearance to land on 30R was given. The corporate traffic was turning a left base to 30L and we were straight into 30R. They made a nice turn on to final and the spacing was fine. On a short final; we were catching up to them and we got an RA to climb. Since we had the traffic off to our left; the spacing was fine. I canted off to the right a little bit and we continued in for landing on 30R with no other problems. The Tower thanked us for helping out. In our minds it didn't seem right. Lessons learned; that is for sure.I don't think the Tower should be giving this clearance when they know spacing might be an issue. It is close runways for 30L and 30R. I should have just done a go-around and complied with the RA or requested something different to get the spacing. I knew that the RA was the other jet; the Tower said it was but you never know. Like in SFO; on a visual to the west runways; you select TA only. Maybe that needs to be the case here if the Tower keeps issuing these clearances.
In such a controlled environment; it might be warranted to allow the selection of TA. If not; then ATC standards should be adjusted to avoid situations which may likely result in a RA.
More incidents for this aircraft family
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.