The best part of the story was that the ground folks were a tad late and on the way to a staff BBQ on the airport grounds.A jetliner taking off at Springfield-Branson National Airport narrowly missed hitting an airport van crossing the runway driven by an employee running late to a barbecue. Surveillance video at the Missouri airport shows a dark van crossing over the runway – just seconds before an Envoy Air jet carrying 50 passengers and three crew members takes off from the same runaway.
Security camera jetphotos show the van past the runway and crossing the hold short line with the aircraft 10's of feet in the air right at the intersection...
Not a particularly good thing for style points.
This one kinda seems to be long in the cowboy improvisational idiocy department for thevan crew...ummm, you don't communicate with the tower when operating on a runway? And the driver's quotes kinda seem to imply he didn't look very much before crossing.
And, did the tower notice any of this? The flight crew?