An SAS Scandinavian Airlines flight carrying 165 passengers narrowly avoided disaster Thursday (February 6) when pilots attempted to take off from a taxiway instead of the designated runway at Brussels Airport in Belgium.
Flight SK2590, scheduled to depart for Copenhagen, Denmark, reached speeds of approximately 125 mph before the pilots realized their error and performed an emergency stop. The incident occurred around 9:45 p.m. local time when the Airbus A320neo was cleared for takeoff from runway 07R but mistakenly positioned on parallel taxiway E1.
“We taxied out as normal, lined up, and suddenly began accelerating like a regular take-off, but after gaining quite a lot of speed, something clearly wasn’t right,” passenger Simon Berneblad Mandegård told The Daily Mail. “The pilot suddenly slammed on the brakes, extremely hard, and the whole cabin felt the force immediately.”
The plane came to a stop at the intersection of taxiways V1/C1, just short of the airport’s fuel tanks.
Emergency services responded immediately, and passengers were evacuated onto the taxiway before being transported back to the terminal. No injuries were reported, but the flight was canceled, and the aircraft has since been grounded for engineering checks.
Brussels Airport confirmed the incident in a statement: “The takeoff of a Scandinavian Airlines aircraft (SK2590) was interrupted last night, because the aircraft was on the taxiway instead of on the runway,” a spokesperson told AeroTime. The airport also noted that the Federal Police provided psychological support to affected passengers.
The Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) of Belgium has launched an official safety investigation. “The goal of this investigation is to formulate safety recommendations in order to improve aviation safety and to prevent similar incidents in the future,” the AAIU stated.
SAS has acknowledged the incident and pledged full cooperation with investigators. “Safety is our absolute priority. We are currently conducting a thorough internal investigation alongside local authorities to understand the sequence of events,” the airline said in a statement.
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