Air Canada Flight 759 almost landed at night on a taxiway adjacent to closed SFO Runway 28L on July 7, 2017. At the last moment, the pilots aborted. The NTSB estimated it came within 14 feet of another aircraft.
Investigators discovered the NOTAM closing the runway was buried on page 8 of their 27-page flight release. In late 2018, then-NTSB Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt complained NOTAMs were too confusing to be useful because “they’re written in language only a computer programmer would understand.” NOTAMs were, in his words, “just a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to.”
