I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time.
When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway.
So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land". Which also means that if you are piloting the landing plane then at your decision height you have to go around.
Also when someone is cleared to land no-one can be given a permission to enter the runway.
There is one clearance that kinda-sorta allows which is "BEHIND landing Boeing 737, line up and wait BEHIND". It intentionally has "BEHIND" before and after the call to be extra clear that the waiting pilot has to confirm that the plane has passed their nose and they can enter the runway while the landing plane is on rollout. But that plane can not be given a takeoff clearance before the plane on the rollout has exited the runway.
We were told that the americans do it differently and I've always found it dangerous.
Europe uses pessimistic runway locks but the US prefers optimistic locks. This improves throughput at US airports with the risk of a rollback on a dirty runway.
It happened before dawn this past Saturday, in near zero-visibility conditions, [...] on a “Cat III” approach that allows an airliner to touch down safely even if the pilots cannot see the runway.
Seems like this would be a good trigger to switch temporarily to a more pessimistic strategy. (Caveat: I don't know anything about aviation.)
I'd be curious to know how much it actually improves throughput. It seems strange to use optimistic locks in such a safety critical process, when a more fail-safe approach is available.
Sounds like a money problem to me. Less time between planes means more planes means more money.
It sounds to me like far too many critical safety decisions are being made with an eye on money rather than safety. There were reports warning that Fukushima wasn't safe in case of a tsunami, but the company in charge of the plant decided to ignore that. Deep Water was caused by cost cuts. The Boeing 737 Max was made for financial reasons, fixing a fundamental hardware problem in software.
Safety engineers clearly need a bigger say in these things.
The last commercial plane wreck in the US was in 2009 and was a small commuter crash with only 49 fatalities[1]. This does not even make the Wikipedia list[2] of deadliest crashes which shows none since 2001. Bureaucratic over reaction to rare events can create worse problems overall for society than not changing anything at all. Just see the US response to 9-11. The American people solved the problem in about 90 minutes. Don't let plane hijackers control the plane. Fight back instead of just wait. Thus UA flight 93. The lesson from that should have been a very measured "We need solid, locking, cabin doors on airplanes". That's it. Not the whole TSA department stand up, 20 year war in Afghanistan, invade Iraq????, Patriot Act forever with secret courts bullshit craziness. Instead of "never let a crisis go to waste" we need the State to be more slow to judgement.
New York is upgrading its subway signalling system [1] from pessimistic to optimistic. Sure, denying entry into an occupied block to the next train prevents collisions. But it also wastes time, energy and money. If there is an emergency on the held train, it’s longer to the station. To say nothing of the added wear and tear starting and stopping entails.
People tend to complain about the safety of airplane even though it is in the top echelon of safe modes of transit. There's no reason to try to reach the highest-hanging fruit trying to make it even safer when people are dying in droves on the road just getting to the airport. Much better to do something about that low-hanging fruit.
If that's your reasoning, then you don't understand what money is. It's a proxy for other things. Saying you're doing something with "an eye on money rather than safety" is meaningless. Substitute whatever else the money could have bought. E.g., doing something with "an eye on apartment building safety rather than aviation safety". Then you can have a discussion.
Maybe you're getting lost in the details, then. This is what markets do. They facilitate complex tradeoffs between scarce resources. More aviation safety means less of something else.
You imagine that the something else is something you don't care about or think doesn't matter - like executive compensation. Well, you're like everyone else - we all think we should be running the country.
Risk will always exist. Our most precious resource is time. Every effort to save it is worth it. What if it causes one accident every 20 years? It saved thousands of years of human time in the meantime.
If time is our most precious resource, then build more runways. The problem is that they cost more money to build and more money to operate. So we go back to
>> It sounds to me like far too many critical safety decisions are being made with an eye on money rather than safety.
Major Airports are often locked in to the Physical foot print either due to Geography or other factors. Sure you can just "move the airpoirt" but then you have the NIMBY problem where everyone wants an airport close by, but never near by....
And if you want to simplistically run it all down to "money" well at that point everything is a money problem, so for like NYC; they could spend billions or Trillions to turn midtown into a big airport, but that seem rather unrealistic.
This narrative that came out of COVID of "if it saves just one life" is a bit ridiculous imo, and not at all practical
At some point, you can build a new airport that is basically hell and gone from the city it serves--such as DIA outside Denver, which had all sorts of problems getting going. But you can't really materially expand close-in airports. And in case anyone thinks this is a uniquely American problem, how long did it take Germany to build a new Berlin airport again?
It takes people's time to build runways. That's time they won't be building other valuable things.
You're ignoring the core truth of the comment you're replying to: Scarcity exists. There is no way to have it all; there are only compromises. Simply walking is dangerous because you could fall. We could all go back to being infants* crawling on the floor if we wanted to be safer. But we won't. Making more compromises in the name of safety has to be justified. Planes will never be perfectly safe. That is okay.
Your eye must necessarily be on both money and safety. If you look at only one, you will only make nonsensical decisions.
I don't know the analysis for the multiple clearance on runways on the US (honestly, it's the first time I hear about it). What I know is that the US has many complex risk analysis that my country (3rd largest aviation area on the world, after the US and EU) doesn't have enough data to replicate. That leads to plenty of policies that we can't actually understand the reasoning.
There’s 16M flights per year, so saving 5 minutes each is 80M minutes, which corresponds to 160 years.
A plane crash will kill about 160 people; so if one happens every twenty years, then we’ll have saved lives if the average age is over 50 (within 20 years of natural death) and lost lives otherwise.
What you’re suggesting is any crash can be attributed to the US method of scheduling takeoff and landing (since that’s the risk issue you’re responding to). That’s not true. If a plane’s engine explodes in midair, it has nothing to do with how the ATC schedules takeoff and landing.
I couldn’t find any crashes listed on Wikipedia in the past 20 years that could be attributed to two planes being directed occupy a runway at the same time.
I remember when my grandfather and I were arguing about whether or not SNES or Sega Genesis was better(he worked for Motorola who made the Sega Genesis processor). Eventually we agreed that whichever one had more buttons on its controller was the superior product, so I won that discussion. Actually I think he was just ready to end the argument but I thought my logic was sound.
I'm not sure a one to one comparison here is appropriate, either. The fundamental argument that 1 minute of wasted time is equivalent to 1 minute of life seems tricky. To prove this is easy, simply ask yourself if you'd rather take a day off your life or spend a day waiting in line at the DMV. I think you'll find that most people would rather still be alive and at the DMV. Loss of life is not equivalent to loss of time.
It is the same thing. Life is finite. You will live every minute, but you better not waste most of them. Last thing you want is to run out of time and not done the things you wanted.
Say I offer to stand in line for you at the DMV and do all your paperwork that otherwise would have taken a day of your life, but in exchange at some point in the future, 1 day from your otherwise natural death, I will find you and shoot you in the head. say I have the resources to absolutely do this and there's no way to avoid it.
You’ll likely still have to spend that time after the horrific accident.
Also, I would disagree that engineering time is more valuable than human life. Engineering time should be spent on safeguarding human life. Otherwise, what are we even doing?
> Sounds like a money problem to me. Less time between planes means more planes means more money.
Everything is a money/greed problem if you look at it through the lens of motivated reasoning.
The usage of infrastructure is mutually beneficial. The airport, the various businesses operating at it, the customers, everyone benefits per flight. Likewise you want to make that infrastructure get used as much as possible.
Would you be complaining about greed if a subway was running trains close together?
But why does it work fine everywhere else ? It's not like we all follow the US model, yet our airports are fine and our airplanes dont crash over silly cost cuts.
There must be something the americans do wrong, somewhere, and optimisation cannot be an excuse for mediocrity. Do it fast and safe or do it slow and safe: the passengers can wait, or build their own planes and airports if they think they can do better.
Are American airports statistically less safe than other ones? Seems like you are assuming this is the case in your comment, but have you actually checked?
It's worth noting that the ICAO system is not perfect from a safety point of view: it often results in the controller saying 'Expect late landing clearance' instead, and clearance to land very close to the ground. As an ICAO-based pilot, I genuinely don't know which is safer. (And I also don't think the difference was important here.)
Well I mean there are many optimistic stuff in american culture that seem nonsensical to us Europeans: for instance giving everyone guns to protect against the government's army is an optimistic view of human nature and I d rather give no gun to anyone instead :D
You wouldn't even have the opportunity to make these peanut gallery potshots if those overly optimistic Yankees took the British/French/German route and did not give the general public access to ATC recordings.
I can agree that the american transparency is a model, even if it fails some rare times (what I hate the most is when they do the whole circus around a terrible lie, with all the appearance of transparent government, but it's rare enough to be forgiven).
Not sure what is has to do with the initial problem that spawned the transparent mea culpa though, which is due to a sort of reckless optimism and an inability to look abroad for better ideas. I think they call it "American Exceptionalism" or some such there ? Even your answer seems to be that you fucked up but at least you're not as bad as ... the French ? What ? :D
I didn't say "at least we're not as bad as the French". I said you don't know how bad the French (or whoever) are because they don't share the same level of details.
If you bothered to comprehend what I wrote I'm pretty much advocating the opposite of American exceptionalism. The accident rate is pretty close across the first world. Why would the close call rate be substantially different?
Thank god aviation policy isn't dictated by people like you who have an ideological bone to pick.
I'm not sure why this is a problem with airports with two runways (doesn't Austin have two?).
I've been in a helicopter hovering over Heathrow airport where you can see the lights from the line of planes coming in to land every 45 seconds that looks like it goes off to infinity. Whatever technique they use there seems to work.
For the most part, Heathrow doesn't do mixed-mode operation (where you have takeoffs and landings on the same runway). However, my understanding is that this is not for safety reasons, but mostly to give people living under the flight paths some periods of respite from the noise. They did use mixed-mode single-runway operation for a while during covid.
I assume it leads to a longer "cleared approach" phase and a shorter "cleared to land" phase and as a courtesy to the pilot behind, clearing the runway as quick as possible.
Taking a quick look at Heathrow approach, looks like runway is clear of the first plane landing when the following plane is 1-2 miles out and around 500ft.
Not only can multiple planes be cleared to use a runway: one to depart, one to land in this example, cleared to land in a sequence, but also:
Multiple landing planes are allowed on the same runway surface at the same time in the daytime as in Oshkosh arrivals, but also a Category I (light single) can be cleared to land if the Category I or II aircraft to follow will be 3000 feet from the threshold, a Cat II (light twin) behind a I or II with 4500 feet of separation.
I was wondering if maybe the long-term change from all this was going to be that two clearances can't be issued without visual/instrument confirmation from the tower of execution of movements. Sort of an IFR/VFR rules for tower operations.
Given how advanced ILS is nowadays you could probably automate all of this - if the plane taking off isn't committed to takeoff (traveling at V1) by the time the landing aircraft reaches decision altitude, an automatic go-around is issued. Basically treat the runway as a "control zone" like trains do, and if the plane on the runway hasn't "cleared the zone" (by whatever definition) then the landing aircraft can't enter the zone.
Certainly that's something that could be conveyed as part of the ILS data at least. Maybe it's undesirable to automate it in the sense of the automation causing more problems (more aborts = more chances for something to go wrong, although the assertion is that by V1 you're committed and by decision altitude you can still abort safely, so this all fits inside the "theory of movements") but you can at least let the landing plane know at decision altitude that there's an aircraft still on the runway. Sort of a "green = runway clear, yellow = committed traffic, yellow bars = moving but uncommitted traffic, red = runway occupied/clearance not granted" type indicator perhaps.
Or maybe if the tower can't visually/instrument confirm execution of movements, the pilot on takeoff has to verbally confirm commit before the landing clearance can be granted. Then it just becomes something specific to zero-visibility operations.
It really seems like there should be some change in how movements are handled/clearances are issued. Maybe we don't need to go to full "one clearance at a time" all the time, but it certainly seems like there should be some tighter rules if the tower can't independently confirm movements are being executed, and perhaps convey that information to the pilot as well (although again, I know that pilots are already information-overloaded, but "is there someone on my runway" is seemingly pretty important and straightforward info).
> So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land". Which also means that if you are piloting the landing plane then at your decision height you have to go around.
My understanding was that the word "cleared" was to be avoided when you aren't actually cleared to land/take off, and the correct wording was now "continue approach runway 08".
There has been a decent amount of study of the cognitive interpretation of exact wordings, resulting in a standardised phrasing that avoids misinterpretation. It's a good thing. Using the word "cleared" could easily cause a lazy/tired/overloaded pilot over a noisy channel to think they are cleared to land.
You are correct, it is indeed "continue" for the approach.
Also the word "takeoff" is protected, I believe it can only be said within giving and reading back a takeoff clearance. Everywhere else it has to be "departure".
> I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time.
* ONE vehicle of any kind!
You can't use the runway because there's a bloody great Volvo in the middle of it, because I put the bloody great Volvo there, because I'm picking up bits of the last guy's wheel spat that fell off, because I don't want to have to write a long long tale about how your prop got chipped.
It seems that the US also has different rules about Low Visibility Procedures / protection of the ILS sensitive area; I don't believe you'd clear anyone for takeoff with someone on a 2-3 mile final, under LVPs.
Interestingly, in the US, for all its "optimistic" procedures, a controller isn't allowed to issue a conditional ("behind X") line-up-and-wait.
But, if an arriving aircraft is still on the runway, a controller can clear a departing aircraft for takeoff if there will be adequate separation when the departing aircraft starts takeoff roll (i.e., the arriving aircraft will be clear of the runway at that point).
> So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land".
In ICAO phraseology, "cleared to land runway 08" is allowed. Further:
> If the runway is obstructed when the aircraft reports ‘final’, but it is expected to be available in good time for the aircraft to make a safe landing, the controller will delay landing clearance by issuing an instruction to ‘continue approach’.
Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time.
In this case, the controller failed to tell the departing flight to hurry (the references to 'no delay' or 'immediate' in the blog post), AND frankly timed things pretty close given the weather. Without the ability to actually see the approaching plane, or perhaps even the plane on the ground, it will probably be found that timing a departure that close at all was reckless. That said, I feel for these tower controllers, it's not common for many planes to get stacked up waiting to depart, and it is their job to get them out. What may have worked just fine on a clear-weather day simply became too dangerous on that day.
The official manual for air traffic controllers in the US is the FAA Order JO 7110.65W [1], if anyone cares to review it.
I would feel for this tower controller if there wasn't a bunch of comments in r/ATC saying how this particular controller has transferred between facilities because he keeps messing up and makes workplace complaints instead of owning up to his mistakes.
Edit to add source:
> a controller who, according to everyone who has worked with him from the last facility where he washed out and now AUS, say has no business being a controller and they can't fire him because he files EEO complaints habitually.
> It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway.
Only in the US is it permitted for the controller to clear an aircraft to land while another is using the runway. The rest of of the world does not allow "anticipated clearance".
(Apart from a "land after" clearance where the landing aircraft must accept responsibility for separation.)
Edited to add: how it works everywhere else in the world: the controller is not permitted to clear an aircraft to land unless and until the previous one is confirmed clear. That's why the term is "cleared".
I'm not sure how many people know this, but one of the first instances of "union busting" ever committed by the US federal govt was against air traffic controllers. The job used to be extremely competitive and prestigious, but overall lower wages and security has made it way harder to attract as many highly talented individuals.
And with how many rules there are in that pdf, it's shocking we don't see multiple accidents a year.
Police unions improve the lives of police officers but do little to improve policing. Teachers' unions improve the lives of teachers but have little effect on student outcomes. It's not obvious to me that a powerful air traffic controllers' union would do anything to improve safety. In fact if other public sector unions are informative, the result of a strong ATC union would be to protect and insulate poor performers.
> The median annual wage for air traffic controllers was $129,750 in May 2021
SOME unions do take advantage, given the traffic controllers' 'single point of failure' it can be very attractive for some unions who are greedy. Again I reiterate, unions are not a bad idea, just not all of them are solely in the interests of the actual employees.
I personally think stability and having some bureaucrat monitoring hours is good. I don't want my air traffic controllers popping pills and pulling double shifts, or showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick. People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves
> showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick
Much like air hosts and pilots, air traffic controllers (at least in the EU) are tested frequently for substance issues including alcohol. A friends father who was an air traffic controller was tested daily for the very reason you mention. Nobody WANTS an accident.
> People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves
Absolutely agree, they're professionals though and well trained. I believe they can be responsible adults. That's why it's so rare to see unfortunate mistakes like this seems to be.
Which also limits the hiring pool as many people, myself included, would refuse to be tested daily on principle. Hell I object to pre-employment screenings.
And I have not drunk a drop of Alcohol in over 25 years, nor done any drugs, dont smoke, nothing. That said I am not taking your little test to prove that to you unless you have a reasonable articulable reason to suspect I may be under said influence.
Then you shouldn't be involved in safety-critical areas. That's just entirely the wrong outlook. You should never skip an important verification step because someone promises things are fine.
yes, Freedom, Personal autonomy, Privacy, and Innocence until proven guilty are all the "entirely the wrong outlook " and people holding that "wrong outlook" clearly can not be anywhere near "safety-critical areas"
that is just absurd, Safety Theater is basically what you are advocating for
Let me ask you this, do you think forcing me to remove my shoes is a "critical safety" process before boarding a plan, and that allowing someone to pay $100 to bypass that means it is secure?
So, you're advocating for permitting ATCs to just decide to start transmitting in cockney rhymes as an expression of their personal freedom and autonomy and for people to be able to walk around town pointing loaded guns at other peoples' faces with their fingers on the trigger?
You believe your absurd statement is in any an analog to refusing drug screening?
You think the response to security theater, no security it all?
You think that is we do not do a daily drug screen on an employee that has no indication they are on any type of drug or alcohol is the same as "transmitting in cockney rhymes "
So you believe in absolute personal freedom except when you don't like its consequences and in curtailing personal freedom except when doing so might inconvenience you personally?
Where did I say anything about "absolute personal freedom"
I clearly outlined that my freedom (in this case my privacy and body autonomy) should be respected unless there is a reasonable and articulable individualized justification to preform a search (i.e drug screen) on the basis I am a danger to others
Your position is we assume everyone is on drugs and they have to prove they are not
My position is we use logic and reason to look at a situation, and if the reasonable suspicion someone may be under the influence then we make the accusation and attempt to collect evidence to prove that.
My position is one of rationality and respects freedom as much as possible while still keeping people safe
your position is authoritarian with no rationality to it at all
I disagree with this take when it comes to safety-critical applications, especially when you are directly responsible for the safety of thousands of lives at any given moment in the day.
At the end of the day, I don't see potentially sacrificing the lives of multiple planeloads of people as a worthy tradeoff for foregoing verification that the controller is not under the influence of mind-altering substances when performing their job because it invades their privacy. Performing the job must inherently be approached with a collectivist attitude.
For other jobs where the magnitude of the mistake doesn't involve bodily harm or significant resources, I agree 100%.
IIRC that figure is partially due to understaffing leading to long hours and six day workweeks, and it’s not exactly ideal for us to have overworked ATC
That's not some statement unique to unions. Every organization suffers from the principal-agent problem and every union has a tension between what the union wants, what it's officers want, and what the members want. Also, there's nothing wrong with greed: it's one of the prime human motivators and is encourage in capitalist/individualist societies.
Unions are frequently reasonably well aligned and sometimes not.
There are many solutions like government mandated elections of the officers, rotation of the officers, multiple unions for a given sector or company or factory, etc... Each solution of course comes with a cost including weaker officers coming in, dilution of the power of the union, etc...
This pattern also exists for governments, transnational organizations, corporations, non-profits, etc... and it doesn't make them bad or good or greedy or saintly - it just is the nature of any group.
In 2020, ATC directed an incoming United 787 on the wrong runway at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The only reason nothing terrible happened is that the Easyjet pilot on the wrong runway called for go-around after looking out the window, moments before the would-be collision.
Didn't make it beyond aviation news, probably because recording ATC is not allowed in France.
Human error will creep up everywhere, all you can control is the frequency.
This is clearly bad law. Not only is it unknowable and unenforceable, but it serves to reduce oversight if actually followed. Society is better off when we pay attention to how it runs and this type of law directly criminalizes that.
And it shows a basic misunderstanding of government, if it's paid for by your tax money it clearly involves you.
This is what the USA has over almost every other country - an acknowledgement that ultimately the people charter the government not the other way around.
People seem to believe other nations have freedom.. In reality when looking at it objectively Most nations lack a huge amount of core freedoms we in the US take for granted
PATCO went on an illegal strike, continued the strike in contravention of court orders, and then remained on strike after a deadline from the president.
They could have returned prior to the final deadline, they could have had a sick-out, they could have worked to rule.
I’m sympathetic to labor demands, but if your oath of office makes it illegal to strike and you participate in a walkout, well, that’s on you.
A union not allowed to strike isn't really a union, when you boil it down the only real leverage a union has is the ability to withhold labor. If the government is allowed to come in and force a contract on people then the bargaining power of the union is severely curtailed. All the business needs to do is wait and lobby the politicians to impose their preferred contract instead of negotiating with the actual employees.
We saw this essential pattern play out with the recent near railway strike. The rail companies barely had to give up anything because the strike would have been too effective to be allowed to happen.
There is a fundamental difference between private and public sector unions.
"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (the guy who created the NLRB and was responsible for modern labor law in the US.)
If a private employee union strikes and makes unreasonable demands, the employer eventually goes out of business.
If a public employee union does the same, the government can't go out of business. So what that means is, as long as the union is granted monopoly on its kind of labor supply, they are holding the taxpayers and their infrastructure hostage.
Public employee unions should not be allowed to strike without giving up their monopoly on labor. And we would do well to not entitle private employee unions to mandatory membership and rigid seniority rules (I know from personal experience that these rules make them incredibly corrupt).
Air traffic controllers do have a union. PATCO, the previous union that was "busted", was a public employee union that chose to hold critical public infrastructure hostage, which is unacceptable. Any union that does that should expect to be stripped of its monopoly on that kind of labor.
No, they did not. Reagan very much wanted to spread that lie, but no infrastructure was held hostage. The laborers who held the skills needed to run that infrastructure declined to work when their compensation negotiations were declined.
Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class that is still being felt today.
Had they all quit that would have been fine - nobody can force you to work. But they chose to not work and keep their jobs.
> The laborers who held the skills needed
So did many other people. They conspired to break the law by arranging to violate their employment contracts in a group so as to cause undue difficulty to their employer and they held public infrastructure hostage to prevent anyone else operating it.
> Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class
The death of unions is a lot broader of an issue than RR killing the ATCU, and generally much deserved. Unions exist to save lives where the law isn't capable but for every plausibly relevant situation like air-traffic control or deep mining there are a hundred overreaches like trying to unionize Amazon warehouses.
As society and work got safer in general it became less important to have such an option as the right to blockade someone's property and dictate who they can hire.
A union that can't strike is a shared suggestion box at best. The ultimate power of a union boils down to the ability to deny labor to businesses and support it's members through that period in order to bargain.
I always assume that a movie like Pushing Tin is about as accurate of a portrayal of the job of ATC as Swordfish or Antitrust is for software development.
The linked article (more interesting than this one IMHO) asks
> Why were they arriving and departing on the same runway when parallels were available?
and it's a good question! If there's more than one runway available, and bad visibility, why make two planes use the same runway so close to one another??
Unless the terminal is between the runways, using parallel runways will still require clearing planes to cross runways. The conflict risks are different, but they don’t go away.
Intuitively feels like the safest way to operate would be landing planes on the farthest runway, with takeoffs on the near one, because it would only require clearing just-landed aircraft to cross the takeoff runway and you have more discretion to time departures than arrivals.
But what about the Southwest crew? The article says they waited a full minute between being cleared for take off and starting to roll. Surely they wouldn't assume the runway is the right place to hang around in a busy airport, planes typically take off straight away. If they do that it will eat into any safety margin.
It's very likely the Southwest pilots were completing a checklist, programming their flight computer, or some other minor pre-takeoff activity before being ready to takeoff. A minute just isn't all that much of a delay. If the controller needed it to happen immediately, they should have first asked if the plane was ready, and then should have issued a takeoff clearance with 'without delay' or 'immediate' in it. Only then would be the Southwest pilots job to refuse the clearance if they couldn't comply immediately.
I am unaware if there is a formal definition of how long a controller should expect a flight to take before following a non-urgent instruction, but 60 seconds doesn't seem wild to me.
Now you could say that the Southwest pilots should have heard 'traffic 3 miles out', and understood that things need to move quickly. But as a pilot, I can say we don't have the traffic picture controllers have, particularly in bad weather. The general understanding is if we can't see other aircraft, we manage our plane, and its ATC who can get a picture of how fast the other aircraft are moving and what is safe from a separation perspective.
As a passenger that flys almost exclusively long haul from very busy airports, it is rare that my plane will come to rest on the runway, generally accelerating in the turn onto the runway and taking off.
Did they come to rest on the runway, or did they wait a minute at the side of the runway and then proceed to takeoff? I don't think you would notice the difference as a passenger, unless you were listening in on the ATC transmissions.
As a passenger there's a pretty obvious difference between "swing a turn, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send" and "swing a turn, come to a stop, sit there a minute or so, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send"
I can not recall a flight where I was not in a queue to depart, nor an airport where there was not a 90 degree turn onto the runway.
Without ATC I do not know when "cleared to takeoff" is given; it may be given off the runway, pilots spend a minute checking the mirrors and blindspot before turning onto the runway.
There are many runway intersections that are not 90 degree turns. They are frequently mid runway so typically only used by smaller planes for departure
Cleared to takeoff can be given before you have entered the runway, or you can be asked to “lineup and wait”.
The first means that you have permission to enter the runway, if you haven’t already, and takeoff. The latter means that you are cleared to enter the runway, but not takeoff and wait for takeoff clearance.
There is zero evidence that happened. They could absolutely have been sitting at the threshold to the runway for those 60 seconds and immediately took off when they turned the corner 60 seconds later
The training I got as a lowly ppl, was that a takeoff clearance meant that the runway was yours to do with as you pleased within reason. If the southwest crew needed to sit on the runway for a few moments getting setup they had permission to do it. Their job is to follow atc directions, which they absolutely did.
If the controller wanted you to do an immediate takeoff they normally make damn sure that you are able and you know the context. At least in my experience mixing it up with jet traffic at Boeing field.
Something like: “Southwest xxx cleared for immediate takeoff, you have a FedEx heavy on 3 mile final”
To the pilot that is saying: you can go, but you only have 90 seconds or so.
Kind of. It’s not unheard of for the plane to have issues on the runway. Flat tire, avionics settings, whatever. That causes you a delay on the runway, or to just have to sit there and close the runway
On a regular day the controller could see this, and ask what is going on. At a small GA airport with training ops the controller is likely used to people pulling out onto the runway and taking their god damn time. The FAA actually advises wait times of as long as 2 minutes for wake turbulence, and that’s something I’ve done. Just sit there on the end of a runway.
Things get a little different, in practice, at busy commercial airports, but the rules are the same.
Used to fly out of MEM in the co-pilot seat when it was still a hub for NWA. Usually, the small planes they lined up on an alternative runway, but occasionally wind direction / strength required using one of the two (now three) parallel runways.
More than once I remember a 747, 777 or A340 taking off and getting the call "cleared for immediate departure". The pilot I was with routinely would say something like "I'm not even taxing onto the runway for 2 minutes, then we can talk".
Yeah. Turbulence from a large plane can affect small planes in really dangerous ways, and it can exist for up to 2 minutes.
So if a large plane has just used a runway, small planes will wait before taking off, whether that’s on the runway or off the side on a taxiway is up to the pilot and the tower controller.
Yes, agreed - this certainly appears to lean towards ATC error given the conditions. Maybe the ATC rulebook needs to be updated for conditions, maybe it doesn't.
And it might be time to think about TCAS extensions to ground ops for aircraft with clearances?
Question, when FedEx says "Southwest Abort!" and then the controller tells them to turn right and Southwest says "negative" is that because they didn't have enough runway to do either?
Reminds me of a time in 1999 when a US Air crew at Rhode Island refused to takeoff in the fog when the controller insisted it was okay. Another aircraft had landed and was lost in the fog about their location, even saying they were on on an active runway and even said an aircraft just took off (over them).
Animation + text here if curious:
https://youtu.be/qUDFY5qlTSA
One of my acquaintances used to be an ATC (air traffic controller) and has many pilot friends from back then. They all say the same thing whenever they talk about the most important thing in aviation:
Have the courage to not take off.
Kudos to that US Airways captain for refusing to takeoff and stay put until everyone got on the same page.
And the first officer too. It's a team effort and safety is the responsibility of all crew members (including the flight attendants to call out something, jumpseaters and even folks dead heading).
I recall in a CRM training they asked the class what would you do if the captain wanted to take off and you thought it was unsafe. Various answers and one person said "I'd hold my feet on the brakes to prevent moving" to which the trainer said yes - that's the right answer.
That’s horrifying. The controller completely ignores all the information and clears the USAir plane to take off, twice. But the crew knew there was a plane on the runway and refused, twice. Incredible.
believe it or not, this controller is a known problem child in the ATC world and has been shuttled around to multiple facilities all the while filing EO complaints against the FAA any time he was in trouble for anything.
"This is the problem right here. You have a controller who, according to everyone who has worked with him from the last facility where he washed out and now AUS, say has no business being a controller and they can't fire him because he files EEO complaints habitually. And yet you have people trying to push another agenda entirely with the 6 day work weeks and fatigue, which this event has nothing to do with."
So I am neither a pilot nor an aviation geek, but to me it looks like, besides heavy fog, two things happened. (1) control misjudged the approach time for FedEx. 3 miles out is - what? - a minute and a half, at best at approach speed? (2) control did not expedite a takeoff for southwest so they took their sweet time rolling onto the runway and accelerating.
At this day and age it is bewildering to see all of this running on human communication essentially. Why cannot descending plane lay a claim on a runway in some computer system and a cabin in Southwest - blare a horn for pilots trying to steer into a claimed runway?
That's called Runway Status Lights, controlled by an Autonomous Runway Incursion System [1]. The busiest US airports have that, but Austin doesn't have one.[1][2]
So the tower controllers had responsibility for separation. Here are the current FAA rules on separation between departing and arriving aircraft using the same runway. See section 3-1-3 of [3].
This is the rule: "Separate an arriving aircraft from another aircraft using the same runway by ensuring that the arriving aircraft does not cross the landing threshold until one of the following conditions exists .... The other aircraft has departed and crossed the runway end or turned to avert any conflict. If you can determine distances by reference to suitable landmarks, the other aircraft needs only be airborne if the following minimum distance exists between aircraft: ...when either is a Category III aircraft- 6,000 feet."
The trouble is, the controller can apparently say "Cleared to land" when they expect that departing aircraft will be airborne and at least 6,000 feet down the runway, and thus out of the way, before the incoming aircraft crosses the landing threshold. Not when it actually is in the air and out of the conflict zone. Or at least in this case, the controller did. This is apparently called "reduced runway separation". The intent is to increase traffic capacity.
But this was in fog. Tower probably could not see the departing aircraft, and they did not apparently have a sensor system to compensate for that.
Given that Austin has been adding > 50k people annually to its population over the past many years, and now is > 2.2 Million people in the Metro area, it might be time to upgrade KAUS from Class C to Class B, or at least started on that path.
KSTL (St. Louis) and KMCI (Kansas City) are Class B, and at 10M and 7M carry fewer passengers than KAUS at 13M annually and have half the number of operations annually [1] [2].
There are many other airports on the List of Class B airports with smaller operations than Austin. [3]
Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS.
KSTL and KMCI were formal airline hubs and are still Class B most likely due to legacy assignments. It's a lot harder for the FAA to "demote" a piece of airspace vs "promote" one.
I'm curious as to what you think upgrading KAUS to Class B would exactly accomplish, especially in this scenario? This was a runway localized mistake by the controller. Also, the word in the ATC community is this tower controller had been moved around the NAS multiple times as a problem child.
KSAT's airspace (not the airport, the airspace) farther south is FAR busier than KAUS and is considered some of the busiest airspace in the county due to multiple military fields in the area, extensive military training, etc. And it's also Class C airspace.
> Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS
Under certain circumstances > 220k annual ops qualifies an airport for Class B status [1]. Austin's 2022 vs 2021 traffic is significantly higher [2]. When you include KEDC (Austin Exec Airport) and KGTU (Georgetown Municipal), the traffic certainly appears to exceeds the thresholds in question [3][4][5]. I didn't bother to look through the other airports within the area.
> I'm curious as to what you think upgrading KAUS to Class B would exactly accomplish, especially in this scenario? This was a runway localized mistake by the controller. Also, the word in the ATC community is this tower controller had been moved around the NAS multiple times as a problem child.
Designation as a Class B changes the care with which the airspace is managed and more importantly, staffed [6][7]. Perhaps the problem ATC is fine for a less busy area, perhaps the Tower staffing could use a little more oomph in the morning hours. There might also be additional RWLS and ARIWS requirements for Class B airports (needs regulatory research - maybe ChatGPT can give us pointers since this is all supposed to be public info!).
> KSAT's airspace (not the airport, the airspace) farther south is FAR busier than KAUS and is considered some of the busiest airspace in the county due to multiple military fields in the area, extensive military training, etc. And it's also Class C airspace.
The FAA Sectional for KSAT (San Antonio) shows that there are multiple Special Use Airspaces (Randolph, Laughlin, Crystal/North, Kingsville MOAs) to separate the civilian traffic from military airspace, and the military has their own controllers [8]. Caution: 111MB file.
KAUS might be the most classic example of Class C airspace in existence. They only have 3 App/Dep positions with a spare 4th, and the top of the charlie is 4500 feet. I can overfly that in a light sport.
Austin airspace isn't nearly as busy as you make it out to be.
And in the context of this incident, arguing that KAUS needs to be upgraded to a Class B is kind of non-sequitur. A class B wouldn't solve anything except to make the area airspace wildly more restrictive.
> I fly in this airspace. (KAUS and KSAT and KDFW)
> KAUS might be the most classic example of Class C airspace in existence. They only have 3 App/Dep positions with a spare 4th, and the top of the charlie is 4500 feet. I can overfly that in a light sport.
> Austin airspace isn't nearly as busy as you make it out to be.
Fair enough, local knowledge FTW. I made a suggestion - "it might be time to upgrade to Class B" as a systematic solution for an airspace that appears to be getting busier. It certainly appears to meet the FAA criteria based purely on stats.
> And in the context of this incident, arguing that KAUS needs to be upgraded to a Class B is kind of non-sequitur. A class B wouldn't solve anything except to make the area airspace wildly more restrictive.
You must have missed the part where I mentioned that Class B designation comes with staffing changes for ATCs which would presumably positively impact such occurrences :-) Maybe the alternative is better training, better operations in mornings, better rules around ATC IFR ground ops. 140+ dead people is 140+ dead people. Let's see what the NTSB says.
Also, with the plans to expand the airport with more gates, I'm guessing changes are coming to that airspace regardless [1][2]. Though the additional 17C-35C runway appears to be past 2037 [2] Pg 17, [3].
> > I fly in this airspace. (KAUS and KSAT and KDFW)
If you're flying in and out of KDFW you should have no trouble with a future Class B KAUS :-)
> If you're flying in and out of KDFW you should have no trouble with a future Class B KAUS :-)
Given my experience navigating the already PITA Bravo shelves in DFW (don't bust through those without an explicit clearance) and/or getting a Bravo clearance which adds to significant pilot workload, I'll take just flying over the charlie at 5500 and taking it easy while on flight following :) Also remember that Bravo airspace traditionally extends to 10,000 feet or more, so the considerations there for VFR traffic are significant.
Some bravo clearances are easy: "Cleared into the Bravo, direct to KXYZ, 4500 feet", others are "Expect vectors" and now you are flying around under direct control of a controller vectoring you around numerous aircraft for 45 minutes or more... yuck (or fun).
Austin’s airport is actually surprisingly small. It’s a single domestic terminal with just 25 gates and basic two level departures/arrivals, and a tiny south terminal that I believe has international arrivals facilities.
When I visited I remember thinking ‘how the hell does this place handle the influx for south-by?’
No, but I figure an airport servicing a metropolitan area with nearly 2 million people would be using all the best practice risk minimization approaches.
What scares me about this is that I have no idea how common or uncommon this is, and what other airports are in a similar situation.
If you are not involved directly with any of that professionally, it is better to treat it the way non-developer treat the OS. Assume it will work as intended because loads of highly trained professionals take care of it. Added benefit ehen it comes to aviation: strict and sensible regulation (the MAX disaster notwithstanding).
> If you are not involved directly with any of that professionally, it is better to treat it the way non-developer treat the OS. Assume it will work as intended because loads of highly trained professionals take care of it. Added benefit ehen it comes to aviation: strict and sensible regulation (the MAX disaster notwithstanding).
Allow me to chime in and respectfully disagree with this sentiment and the metaphor.
As the saying goes - the aviation (just as the automotive) industry saves lives (as in "advances security") one accident at the time. It would make sense that close calls like this Austin near mass casualty event should contribute to the future safety as well. In that context, it's absolutely legitimate to be suspicious and ask safety-related questions, including in a HN comment or in real life - instead of shutting someone down.
Speaking of the developer-OS metaphor - any non-rookie developer should be aware of not only the security and vulnerability of one's own software but also of the security and vulnerability of the underlying OS, infrastructure and even hardware. The number of building blocks gets larger by the day and nearly each building block is becoming increasingly complex. Yes, there are professionals working on each those blocks yet there are new CVEs and associated attacks all the time (incl. ransomware). If we add 0-days into consideration (a.k.a. "the unknown unknowns" in the software context) IMHO we should be able to conclude that the used developer-OS metaphor is not helpful.
The older and more experienced we all become, the more should we be cognizant of the potential risks (not only in our particular industry niche) and we should welcome and consider a normal, widely accepted practice to challenge the status quo and pose questions that should overall increase the number of brains and eyeballs on the problem and (unknown) unknowns - be it vulnerabilities or security risks, especially to our bare lives.
And what makes anybody think this incident will not be properly reviewed, analyzed and suitable mitigation actions identified? And why do people on HN always think they know it better than the actual experts in this field, while just expectung users of their products, I just asse in most cases that is some piece of software, to worry about the details at all?
Well, I'm fucked if I assume that it's working as intended, and fucked if I don't, because as you say, I'm entirely reliant on professionals doing their job correctly when I'm flying.
And that professionalism seems to have failed in parts in this circumstance. (And has been well noted to have failed in many other circumstances with often tragic consequences.)
All that aside, I still want to understand why the Austin airport doesn't have ARIS? Cost/benefit? Not mandated by the FAA?
I'm afraid that "shush, and leave it to the professionals" isn't a very compelling argument.
No idea about Austin airport. Regarding professionalism and failure, the Austin incident is actually proof of the system working as intended. There was, by the looks of it, only one real mistake made, maybe two. Training of everyone involved, including the ATC, prevented those mistakes from creating a cascade of failures that could have let to two hull losses and 100+ dead passenger on the Southwest flight.
For fatal accidents to happen in aviation and aerspace, more than one thing has to go wrong at the same time. Single, isolated failures are no longer sufficient to cause serious accidents.
I don't think Austin is proof of the system working as intended, the only thing that saved them was the FedEx flight being able to take action at the last moment during their approach, if the fog was a little thicker and they couldn't see the Southwest flight on the runway as early as they did it would be a catastrophe.
That's just luck, not a system that's working as intended.
No, that is good training on behalf of FedEx, Southwest (knowing you have a plane above your own during take off and still follow ATC guidance is no easy feat) and the ATC (knowing you fucked up, staying calm and giving the correct instructions and keep everyone alive is again no easy feat). And training of operators absolutely is part of the overall system.
A safe system is resilient to errors. The controller made a mistake - that happens, the system should deal with it. But in this case, a crash was averted only because the fog lifted. It was pure luck. Ground movement radar, a runway incursion warning system, or a different landing clearance protocol could all have provided the necessary safety buffers.
When you’re up to the last “hole” in the cheese, that’s a failure.
If the wings fall off my plane mid flight, I jump out with a parachute, and I land without injury then the "overall system" of plane-plus-parachute-plus-training has succeeded.
However, the plane component of the system failed, because the wings aren't supposed to fall off.
The aviation industry in the US is subject to federal regulation, meaning that the scope and purpose of its regulation is laid out by statutory authority granted to the FAA by laws passed by congress, who are elected by the people of America.
In other words, aviation regulation exists to serve the interests of the people.
If the airport or airline industry is trying to cut corners or save money at the expense of the safety of passengers, the interests of other air users, or the people who live under flight paths, items the job of congress to grant the FAA the authority needed to stop that - or to ensure that it is using its already-granted authority effectively to that end.
And ultimately the only check on whether or not that is happening is the electorate’s oversight of its congresspeople.
So yes, you can take an interest in how the airline industry is regulated, as a passenger or a random person who has planes fly over your head from time to time, because you have a say in making sure it’s not captured by industry and allowed to compromise your safety.
The airport and the airlines don’t make any decisions about ATC. That is controlled entirely by the FAA. The airlines and airports don’t pay for it either (directly anyway)
They designate the class of an airport not by the number of people living in the metro area around it, but based on the complexity of the airspace and the density of the traffic.
Austin probably isn’t a class b because while it may be an airport for a large city it doesn’t see a ton of traffic as it isn’t a huge hub. The regional hubs in that area are DFW and Houston and are way more traffic.
It’s also worth noting that making a this a class B airport wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of how the arrivals and departures are controlled at the runway level.
In spite of what happened with Boeing, the FAA is usually very good at airspace safety.
I have bad news for you. If the FAA were contemplating adjusting the requirements for certain classes of airport or the rules applicable under certain conditions at certain classes of airport, that perhaps airport operators and airlines whose costs and operations might be impacted by such a change can take part in a process called lobbying where they apply pressure to the regulator to make sure those changes don’t adversely affect them.
Lobbying can be good, of course! Airports and airlines likely have good knowledge about how regulations impact their operations!
But it’s the job of Congress in theory to represent their constituents’ interests - not merely their constituents who own airline stock or work for airport ground handling companies but all their constituents - to make sure that the framework the FAA correctly takes into account the competing interests of ensuring an efficient and high capacity aviation industry, as well as making sure that passenger safety is maintained.
As you say, the FAA has a good record of doing this.
But individuals saying ‘well I’m sure the industry knows best’ is precisely what leads to regulatory capture and that leads to the situation where airports are permitted to accept heavy automated landings under conditions where maybe they really ought not to without additional ground safety equipment in place.
Airlines are generally the ones asking for these safety upgrades before anyone else. They would love if every airport had Cat. III approaches on every runway, and there were designated parallel runways at every airport.
Airlines like higher classed airports since it frequently means the ability to handle more traffic safely, and better service from ATC.
Opposition to airspace changes are ALWAYS nimby's. ALWAYS. Go look at the public comments for any proposed change.
Wut? Because I’m aware of how the software world works I’m worried about literally every other professional endeavour. If it works it’s because it’s been refined over many years, or because of duct tape and spit.
No, I'm dead serious. To usr another example: surgery. Just assume people cutting you up know what they are doing, even if you do not have the slightst clue.
"What follows is an account of how Martha was allowed to die, but also what happens when you have blind faith in doctors – and learn too late what you should have known to save your child’s life. What I learned, I now want everyone to know. In a small way, I hope Martha’s story might change how some people think about healthcare; it might even save a life."
Eh, i know surgery videos of people who know what they are doing.. so i can verify what they do in best/good times. (Recommend ARD/Alpha for those heart transplant videos)
The daylight of observation keeps all involved honest.
Then i also know horror stories from someone thrustworthy, about surgeons throwing extracted body parts after nurses in high stress situations. No, i will not name names, but life and death situations need a perfect team and you dont always got that perfect team.
And surgery quality being dependant on the actual execution of the surgery (chief surgeon is not automatic the best individual contributor to surgery).
You want the most hours on the knife guy for best outcome, not some administrator with white coat.
Also you want to be near univesity clinics, they are spearheading new stuff, the more you get away from them, the operation technique is depending on the age of the doctors education and the hospitals financials to keep up to date, send doctors to regular re-trainings and try new things. Then there are lawsuits, they keep the people responsible, but also risk averse.
So if you are in a high risk situation, in a lawsuit rich country you are fucked, cause nobody will try the dice throw when worst comes to worst.
Trust in systems working, is upkept by untrusting agents.
So like in capitalism, were the price aware negotiate the deals down for the crowd who does not want to haggle.
Finally: The infrastructure & hierarchy of hospitals (in europe), as we know them today, emerged largely from the two world wars were lots of nurses and doctors were integrated into army structures. Which means it suffers from the same inefficency and structural problems those armies back then suffered from. Now you have the MBA process micro optimization on top of that, so i wouldnt trust that machine blindly..
One issue with that is that "aviation" includes a lot more than commercial airliners - it also includes inexpensive, Spartan general aviation aircraft. The cost of such a system would be prohibitive.
Just look at the rollout for ADS-B In/Out if you're curious how difficult that might be to implement.
At least one of the planes in this situation was equipped with the system that lands the plane automatically in almost zero visibility. It’s not a stretch of imagination to see how that can extend to the system that tracks planes on approach to the airport and steering on the ground and extrapolates their trajectories at least for the typical braking/abort time forward. These are not general aviation, these are planes carrying tons of cargo and hundreds of people.
What you’re talking about is called a collision avoidance system and it exists and both of these planes have it.
It doesn’t alert you to planes on the ground because it would never stop going off. How is the system supposed to know that the pilot approaching the threshold as you land is going to stop? It can’t so it would issue an immediate correction alert and you have to go around.
No, no and no. Safety critical systems must be validated to be safe in the operational domain and for that they must be deterministic. AI is anything but that.
AI is entirely deterministic. ChatGPT and StableDiffusion and friends are fed endless amounts of random seeds along with every input to keep them from just saying always the same thing.
"Deterministic" only insofar as it's repeatable, but their behaviour is not predictable. If the behaviour is not predictable, how can it be validated as being correct?
If for a given set of inputs there is a deterministic output, then the overall behaviour to a series of inputs is just as deterministic and predictable.
I'm not sure what you mean with "is not predictable" when you also admit that it's repeatable.
Predictable as in, can say in advance what it will do.
Repeatable means you get the same output a second time, given the same input. Predictable means you can say in advance what it will do, and can then check the output against your prediction.
If you can't predict the outcome, you can't validate the process, and can't guarantee its performance.
I think the point is that reality is essentially a chaotic system. That is, yes, you can repeat a failure from an input once you've seen it, but the search space is too big to enumerate beforehand.
That entirely depends on what exactly you implement here, it's entirely possible to implement an AI with continuous & linear properties, meaning that you can extrapolate it's behaviour between a set of inputs with decent accuracy and it won't suddenly change it's behaviour between continuous & linear inputs.
But AI isn't different than existing software systems either. Both will take an input from reality and take actions upon it.
That's useless in this case. You need to be able to prove that it will work with all inputs, and there are too many combinations of inputs to exhaustively enumerate.
There is no way to determine that a non-trivial neural network won't drastically diverge in output due to small changes in input (eg one pixel attacks on image classifiers). This is true for all current models I know of.
Almost all neural network implementations have continuous outputs (ie the nodes in the output layer produce a value between 0 and 1). That doesn't change the above issue at all.
This is much less of an issue with traditional methods
A generative AI may well be deterministic and generate repeatable output for a given inpiut, but that doesn't mean the output is correct for every input. It may merely generate the wrong answer consistently.
Roughly, they are asking whether you can take an AI system and effectively reduce it to an analytic function and tell, without actually running the AI, what the output is going to be with a particular input.
Looks like the Piper M600, Daher TBM 940, and Cirrus Vision all have auto-land capabilities through the Garmin G3000 system. But it doesn’t seem to be as sophisticated as what is described for the airliners. It’s more of an emergency system.
Yeah, but at least at this airport, they almost always use separate runways. They COULD share, but that sounds like making perfection the enemy of improvement.
Because adding more technology doesn’t always makes things work better. I like this idea but the problem is you’ve just added another point of failure.
Sure it may avoid this situation, but how many aircraft lifted off and landed at airports in the same day? In America I’d hazard a guess at aground the tens of thousands. Any new system has to reduce the complexity or risks of flying and that’s very hard to do.
I’m not an aviation expert either but it’s assume that some form of system exists for this also in a more manual form.
Hand-waving about "people" == "simpler" == "better" aside, read about TCAS.
Humans in the loop are a SPoF if they're there:
1. Solely to read information over a lossy, slow medium like analog radio. Digital data between ground and air systems should be the primary means of comms with voice radio as a backup channel for clarification and stating intent.
2. To flawlessly plan and avoid collisions between dozens of objects moving at high speed in 4 dimensions. Never going to happen. These should be done and verified mechanically, continuously.
Humans should be guiding and assisting mechanical, reliable automation of decision-making rather than playing telephone or doing long division on paper when calculators exist.
They likely mean { X, Y, Z, T } three spatial dimensions and time which are four orthogonal dimensions.
That said, it makes the "moving in" redundant and is shy a few dimensions if you want to go full descriptive phase space diagraming given velocity and acceleration in each spatial dimension are missing.
I suggest you take your objections up with the authors of, say,
A Four-Dimensional Space-Time Automatic Obstacle Avoidance Trajectory Planning Method for Multi-UAV Cooperative Formation Flight
or any number of other similar papers.
Many prefer to think of an objects path as a trajectory in space-time (four dmensions) and for two ojects to "collide" their paths must coincide within that 4-D space within an Epsilon for some value of WTF.
But as ... you yourself ... note above, the planes aren't moving in four dimensions. If time is one of the dimensions, all the planes are doing is existing.
The path of the plane is a static curve in 4-dimensional space, yes.
But the plane is not located at any point in the 4-dimensional space, and the position in 4-dimensional space that it doesn't have is not changing over time. Both of those things are required before you can describe the plane as "moving" within the space.
There is no secret backup time that will allow you to track the plane's hypothetical motion along an explicit time dimension. That's not a thing.
I confess. I literally had no idea what you were intending to convey with those two sentences so I restated alternatively what I intended to convey in the hope it might make clear my position (if that was an issue for you) or that I might learn more from your response.
> Where do you think you're contradicting me?
That's not a thought that I thunk.
Therefore I have no response.
> But the plane is not located at any point in the 4-dimensional space
Every point along the 4D path trajectory of the plane in {X,Y,Z,T} is a literal {X,Y,Z} location of that plane at time T.
> Both of those things are required before you can describe the plane as "moving" within the space.
I certainly did not describe the plane as "moving" within R^4.
> There is no secret backup time that will allow you to track the plane's hypothetical motion along an explicit time dimension.
I utterly fail to understand what you intend to convey here.
Although I note that the actual (not hypothetical) velocity of the plane projected onto the time axis is very likely to be on the order of approximately one second per second.
Hard disagree with the notion this adds a degree of failure.
From a layman's perspective, it replaces one primary degree (pilot-control coordination) with another (a technological solution) and delegates the staffers to supervisory roles. That is a risk reduction due to the increase of confirmations and the independence between the staff decision and the software's decision.
Expecting mechanical accuracy from humans is a fool's errand.
ATC should be wearing VR goggles, visualizing approach and takeoff routing as it maps to flown with machines spotting the dangers similarly but differently from TCAS.
I interned at a VR lab at NASA Ames in the late 1990s. This very idea (ATC operations in low-vis conditions using VR or AR) was what fed their grant proposals. It has always been 20 years away; some of the things I learned:
1) VR itself can lead to spatial disorientation and will introduce its own control issues.
2) A significant percentage of people (~1 in 4) cannot use VR without motion sickness. This is independent of #1. Modern VR (Oculus etc.) at first claimed to be better, but guess what, plenty of people still get sick. Sinus congestion can cause this even in the tolerant.
3) Position reporting of planes today is nowhere near accurate, reliable, or real-time enough to present a whole picture of runway ops. This is fixable with enough $$$...but who pays?
4) I suspect "VR ops" procedures from the FAA would take years to be developed and approved, without some kind of urgent mandate.
My gut feeling is that we'll have automatic ground traffic control at major airports by the time the necessary systems are in place, and skip the goggled humans entirely.
And the VR goggles help them read the minds of pilots about the speed in which they move their planes around on the ground, and when?
Move fast and break things has no place in aerospace nor aviation, just rolling whatever fancy new tech is there is not done for reasons. And this behavior made aviation as safe as it is today.
There is nothing wrong with a layman’s perspective in any industry, and aerospace is not certainly not the sole domain of safety critical systems. An aerospace layman might still bring insight from other areas, which was the case here IMO.
You have been repeatedly dismissing people in this thread, but HN is about being curious. “Leave it to the professionals” is neither satisfying nor interesting.
Curiosity is about learning, isn't it? Nothing wrong with asking questions, or following discussions and learn something new about an industry or domain you don't know a lot about.
Throwing ideas out to improve things, without properly thinking about the the root causes for incidents, not waiting for official investigations to be run, and all of that based on some audio recordings and headlines, or news coverage at best, is neither curious nor allows people to learn something. So yes, at a certain point, leave it to the professionals (whom else would one leave it to anyways?) is exactly the right thing to do. And maybe listen to people with more knowledge on a subject (probably not me in that case so).
Insisting on pre-formed "layman" opinions about something as peculiar as aviation, or aerospace, is the opposite of curiosity.
How are we supposed to learn if you just tell everyone to “leave it to the professionals”?
If you don’t agree with something someone posts, contribute to the discussion by explaining the issues. Why shouldn’t the ATC be sacked? Safety culture. Why shouldn’t they install ground radar? Complexity. Etc.
Appeals to authority are the worst kind of arguments because they don’t help us to understand what to expect from them.
The Southwest crew here is also to blame, they knew a plane was on short final to their runway in terrible visibility and for some reason took their sweet time taking off.
You’re assuming situational awareness, but they would have been running checklists preparing for takeoff, and may not have heard how far away the fedex was. I didn’t think they took overly long, and they weren’t instructed to hurry.
The Southwest flight announced that they are ready after presumably holding short of the runway to do exactly what you just said. ATC also informed them that there was a 767 3 miles out right after reading the take off clearance. The Southwest crew read back the take off clearance, so presumably they also heard the bit about the other plane. Even without being instructed to expedite the departure, they should at least have realized that they don't have a ton of time on the runway.
More will surely be revealed in the follow up investigation and right now it's all armchair piloting. But I too am a little surprised the Southwest flight took its sweet time to do anything and was seemingly unaware of what was going despite being explicitly informed.
Totally agree we should wait for the investigation. It’s going to be very interesting.
To your point though, we also don’t know what was going on in the cockpit of the 737. Even if they were aware of how close the FedEx jet was, it’s entirely possible something went wrong that caused them to delay the takeoff roll (assuming it was delayed).
There are plenty of things that could have gone wrong on the ground. Separating traffic is the ATCs job and clearly there was a loss of separation. Very hard for me to see how this could be Southwest’s problem particularly since they weren’t yet airborne.
Commercial pressures. Holding for Fedex would have added a few mins, maybe lost them their place in the queue, etc. It's not a reason to act unsafely, but it is a factor.
> Commercial pressures. Holding for Fedex would have added a few mins
They spent a minute extra before starting their takeoff roll; it wouldn't have hurt to wait an additional 5 minutes. Commercial flights build in a generous margin for ground ops these days. I doubt this was a factor in this specific case.
> maybe lost them their place in the queue, etc.
They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].
> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].
Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).
>> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].
> Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).
This routing appears to require the SouthWest aircraft to enter the active runway with FedEx Heavy on Final to that end, presumably the problem we're trying to avoid ...
In both cases, SW would be well within their rights to say "unable to comply".
> Why cannot descending plane lay a claim on a runway in some computer system and a cabin in Southwest - blare a horn for pilots trying to steer into a claimed runway?
Because you have unions protecting the manual, error-prone job of human operators.
More or less the only real Six Sigma safe industry humanity managed to create. And still, every incident turns everyone into safety and procedurural experts, even before the official incident reports are done.
As much as this frustrates me, it has always been like that, and always will be like that.
^1 At the point and time of power generation. Safety may not apply if your ground water was poisoned by a Uranium mine. If your town happens to have its cancer rates triple you probably started smoking or something. You will not be eligiblefor compensation.
> Why the Austin airport situation was so dangerous.
Because the planes almost collided. But the author wants to say more than that. The article covers the “how” things went wrong by analyzing the transcript. The write-up doesn’t answer the key ”why” question —- why are existing procedures and training not suitable?
Safety-critical systems (including procedures and protocols) must be designed to account for wide human variation, including mistakes and miscommunications. Let’s not waste our time pointing fingers at one person.
The author didn't point fingers at anyone. He was explicit that the investigators will do the job of finding out the "why". His tone is entirely appropriate given that, if the FedEx operators had not went above and beyond, we would have seen a mass casualty event at Austin's airport.
Accusing the author of blaming individuals is rather silly when you're rushing to blame training/procedures/the system.
> ... blaming individuals is rather silly when you're rushing to blame training/procedures/the system.
I see your point. I am not ruling out individual culpability.
Still, by the time a person is in a cockpit or a control tower, they have a history, a record of performance. It is part of the system's responsibility to evaluate this record.
So I am less likely to blame an individual only, because to do so would require the individual to act in a way that no system could predict, mitigate, or compensate for.
Listening to the radio traffic, everybody stayed super cool and chill throughoit this, including the ATC. All the way until FedEx cleared the runway, at which point the ATC showed some emotion in his voice. The FedEx pilots again stayed super chill. That's what coolness and professionalism during pressure and under stress looks like.
It was without a doubt a performance problem with the tower controller.
FedEx deserves all the credit for avoiding a disaster. As soon as they got their clearance to land, they called back to clarify and verify it. So, they knew that this was going to be a close one, and you can bet that they were ready to go around and abort the landing before they every broke out below minimums and saw the Southwest on the roll.
FedEx knew it was going to be ugly, and they were already ready for the go around.
It could be the fault of the southwest crew for dallying on the runway when there was an incoming jet. Had they gone immediately they would have been long gone by the time FedEx tried to land.
The pilots take off when they take off. If their take-off clearance isn't obviously time limited, they are certainly allowed to take their time. If they rush the take-off they might skip crucial items from their checklists in the haste, we learned that lesson the hard way already. Or what would have happened had the southwest jet had an issue on take off and had to reject? There is a number of reasons to reject a take off before decision speed that will take the plane down the rest of the runway on full brakes.
Who is saying that procedures allow one plane to take off when one is "3 miles out" or 65 seconds out at a very conservative estimate of a reasonable speed. This isn't a lack of attention or coordination. He literally decided that one plane could take off in that space and repeatedly confirmed this decision.
> Who is saying that procedures allow one plane to take off when one is "3 miles out"
The FAA says that, specifically the 7110.65 which governs ATC rules and procedures. In a radar environment it allows for departures when the arriving aircraft is 2+ miles from the runway, and there will be at least 3 miles of separation within 1 min of takeoff. A separate rule requires that the departing aircraft is at least 6000ft down the runway and airborne before the arrival crosses the runway threshold.
If there is a departing plane rolling up to the hold short line and confirmed ready for immediate takeoff, there is possibly time to get them out and maintain separation. If it's low visibility, the departing plane is rolling slowly and not confirmed ready, then it's a bad bad idea.
I think that's generally correct, but I'm not familiar with all of the rules. That said, even if the Southwest plane had been faster on the runway, they weren't going to be able to maintain 6000 feet of separation. If Southwest starts rolling from a dead stop, and Fedex is barreling in at 140 knots from two miles, they're necessarily going to converge until Southwest accelerates, which takes a minute.
Juan Brown [1] made an interesting point also. For a Cat II or III approach, and this one was definitely Cat III, there is an ILS critical area that Southwest would have impinged on as it was taking off.
It says there can be as little as 2 miles of separation which I read as 2 miles when the wheels lift off begining acceleration would end up with 0 ft of separation.
The rules specifically state how 2 miles of separation is defined. 7110.65 5-8-4-Note 1 says "This procedure permits a departing aircraft to be released so long as an arriving aircraft is no closer than 2 miles from the runway at the time. This separation is determined at the time the departing aircraft commences takeoff roll." [1]
Just to keep stating this: I'm not at all defending the AUS controller here. A squeeze play like this in low visibility is needlessly reckless.
That seems in line with what happens though. There's less than a minute, normally around 40 seconds between movements, a take off and landing. To casual observer it seems close of course but it appears the delay from the southwest crew was the issue. Then it's complicated by the lack of visibility from the tower because the controller couldn't detect the delay and issue appropriate commands.
The aircraft were at all relevant times broadcasting their position using ADSB.
The controller had at least one screen displaying their positionx probably several. It may fuse multiple data sources. They may also have been able to see the Southwest aircraft, although maybe not clearly or only as lights.
Despite this it can be difficult to judge the speed of an object at long distances under less than ideal circumstances and at night without a long observation period.
So yeah they knew where they were but not the acceleration.
It's also worth pointing out that the controller may have been in sudden stress due to realising the aircraft were too close, and so may have made a call that they already knew the answer to.
ATC is run by humans, planes are piloted by humans. The whole environment is highly controlled and regulated. And highly complex, and as this incident shows, one mistake in the whole chain, even a little one, can literally kill hundreds of people.
This is nothing one can solve by throwing even more sensors and technology in, and have that run by ChatGPT or something. Highly trained people with the right amount and kind of technology are the solution.
Edit: Sensors and stuff tell you were aircraft is, not what the human pilots are going to do when within the aloted period of time they have to do whatever they are cleared to do. Hence, you do the logical thing and ask them.
That humans are in charge of ATC and flying the planes doesn't mean that there can't be automation to assist them and cover mistakes.
Poor visibility should not ever be a factor when we can have sensors that show exactly where the plane is on the ground. And yes we are definitely at a point where machine learning can predict the likely actions based on the human communication and warn if the predicted path could lead to a collision. The point is to have multiple safty systems (inclduing the human operators) so that one mistake doesn't kill hundreds of people because there are secondary systems to catch it.
I see aircraft (and even airport ground vehicles) on the runway all the time on my ADS-B setup. They 100% have them, just nobody was looking at them at the right time.
I find that in stressful and risky situations people stop trusting the data in front of them. They want to believe things are alright and will keep looking for new pieces of information to confirm that, while downplaying the importance of contradictory information.
Do you know how true this is for (relatively) reliable systems such as those found in aviation? I know that in everyday life, what you say is absolutely true -- I definitely stop trusting electronic systems in stressful situations -- but then I also know how they feed me misleading as well as blatantly false data all the time, so I'd argue that not trusting them is not irrational per se.
The way I understand it, it's not so much about the reliability of the electronics, but rather of human cognition. A lot of people have trouble believing that they (or other people in their custody) are on a trajectory to a fatal accident, so they instinctively reject evidence of this (not using their full brain due to stress response) and continue to search for evidence confirming that everything is alright.
It is well known in the ATC community that this tower controller that was responsible for this incident was a problem child. He had been shuttled multiple times between facilities as a poor performer and was well known for filling EO complaints against the FAA for performance actions taken against him.
So it's someone crying racism every time they are disciplined. A position that can kill tons of people with one wrong move should not be able to do this.
Man the FedEx crew who gave the "Southwest Abort" call on the radio earned their wings that day. Just amazing presence of mind to do exactly the right thing in the moment.
It was a good thing to try, but the Southwest plane was above V1 (edit: may not have been, but acted as if they were) and couldn't abort, and didn't. Both planes climbed away from the runway with minimal clearance between them. It was simply luck that they didn't crash anyway.
The fast reaction by the Fedex pilots may have contributed to increased distance between the planes that saved them, but their callout to the Southwest flight didn't fundamentally change anything. Maybe we'll find out that the Southwest flight climbed slower, suspecting the Fedex plane was directly over them. In that case maybe the callout in addition to the Fedex crew being attentive saved the day, but I haven't seen anyone claim that yet.
If the Southwest crew had realized how close the Fedex plane was, maybe they would have aborted even if it meant running off the end of the runway, but they didn't do that.
I'm not sure anymore, given the above replay, that the Southwest plane was at V1. The Fedex flight was at least directly over (according to some other transponder-based replay videos), and might have passed the Southwest plane by about a plane length (as shown in the above video), before the Southwest plane had accelerated enough to close the velocity gap. Maybe Fedex waited, but if they radioed the request for Southwest to abort before the planes were overlapping in the horizontal plane, Southwest should have easily been able to stop.
It's up to investigators to find out. Pilots definitely can (and have the right to) abort after V1, if they consider it safer than taking off. Before V1, you can be sure that abort is safe, after V1, you have to weigh risks of high-speed abort against risks of continuing flying, but staying on the ground is still possible.
Yes, and nitpicking - decision speed is V1, not V0.
No, it's not (always) more dangerous, please read the operation manuals if you don't believe me.
Let me put it another way. V1 is not the speed after which you cannot abort, V1 is the speed after which you can attempt to takeoff. Or, quoting the Boeing flight manual,
> V1 is the maximum speed at which the flight crew must take the first action to reject a takeoff.
If something happens _before_ V1, pilots must abort takeoff, period. However, if something happens after V1, pilots can still make a decision to stay on the ground.
Furthermore, V1 is calculated so that the plane can stop before the end of the runway even if one of the braking systems is not working properly (e. g. one of the engines is out and reverse thrust cannot be used). On a fully working plane, the actual distance necessary to stop will be lower. Then, there is always a safety zone right after the runway, which is not taken into account for V1 calculation.
Anyway, the investigation will thoroughly consider all the factors, let's wait for the results.
Yes but the primary cause of the Tenerife disaster (a collision on the ground with one 747 taking off and another one crossing the runway) was poor CRM in the cockpit of the departing plane, with bad visibility and multiple incidents as contributing factors.
IIRC, it wasn't caused by the inexperience of the tower controller, or them being distracted, etc.
Listening to that audio is incredible almost chilling. The calmness in the voices.
I understand this is how they are selected, trained and ultimately operate everyday moment-to-moment but the gap is so far for me I can't begin to understand it.
Genuine question, why is this not fully automated today? Seems like something we should be easily capable of doing given CAT III.
To be honest, recordings from cockpits where pilots aren't that eerily calm (to our amateur ears) typically end with a fatal crash.
It reminds me of a video I saw that explored the crew resource management of a plane, and the good culture of the airline, that led to decision making that prevented a situation caused by the captain's earlier error becoming far worse.
Working my way through it. It starts by talking about the bad apple theory but then debunks it;
> The Bad Apple Theory. It maintains that: • Complex systems would be fine, were it not for the erratic behavior of some unreliable people (Bad Apples) in it. • ‘Human errors’ cause accidents: more than two-thirds of them. • Failures come as unpleasant surprises. They are unexpected and do not belong in the system. Failures are introduced to the system through the inherent unreliability of people.
> • Getting rid of Bad Apples tends to send a signal to other people to be more careful with what they do, say, report or disclose. It does not make ‘human errors’ go away, but does tend to make the evidence of them go away; evidence that might otherwise have been available to you and your organization so that you could learn and improve.
> • Putting in more rules, procedures and compliance demands runs into the problem that there is always a gap between how work is imagined (in rules or procedures) and how work is done.
> Getting technology to replace unreliable people is an attractive idea, and is wide-spread. But technology introduces new problems as well as new capacities. Rather than replacing human work, it changes human work. New technology may lead to new kinds of ‘human errors’ and new pathways to system breakdown.
blancolirio does excellent breakdowns of air incidents over on youtube with very low latency, here's his video on the above incident for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvUOHa8n7aQ
F for Southwest and the tower for lack of awareness, big fucking A+ for FedEx guys for babysitting everybody around.
I think one problem with the radio communication is that because of its terse and scripted nature all of the emotion is removed and it does not convey the urgency.
I can imagine the apprehension of FedEx pilots when they asked "confirming we are cleared to land Runway 18 Left?". I can also understand why the controller just treated it as one of the million other question of the same type without ever catching there is anything wrong here.
Question: are all approaching and departing planes on the same radio channel? Just wondering how the FedEx pilot communicated with Southwest plane. And if so, how does that work at very busy airports like Atlanta where there must be a couple dozen planes coming at going during peak times? Seems it would be confusing for everyone to be hearing everyone’s comms with ATC? (On the other hand it’s probably a good thing, and certainly was in this situation; just wondering how they handle that)
So in airport with multiple "Towers", an approaching aircraft is contacted (on a preset freq?) while still a ways out, and instructed to switch to a given "Tower" frequency on approach? (Same with departing planes)
Generally planes do the initial contact to airports on the approach frequency and get handed over to the appropriate next frequency as needed. The frequencies are set and static for a particular airport with alternatives available if there's some issue with the standard one. AFAIK planes are told which frequencies to contact on the whole way by whatever previous controller had them.
Wow. Just listed to the audio on this. At the end the tower radios over to the Fedex crew: "You have our apologies, we appreciate your professionalism".
As someone who lives in Austin and recalls a fair amount of other issues with the airport I didn't realize I had yet another concern to worry about... Good thing we had someone paying attention but it seems like we should add more buffer time between these comings and goings. Though I know a lot of the airport has been overwhelmed with plenty of other issues.
Is zero visibility an unheard of condition at Austin’s airport? I thought I saw the other day they don’t have ground radar, which would probably be the leading resolution item if it’s the case. But even then, why not slow things down for the weather? 3 miles or 60 second turnaround when the runway is cat III??
We get occasional fog at the AUS Airport, so not unheard of.
Austin has been experiencing a lot of growth and I'm wondering how much of this is stressing the different systems at the airport. Earlier this year it was common for us to run low on jet fuel for lack of storage. On the weekends we've had issues with lines lasting for hours. There is a fight between the city and one of the leaseholders regarding expansion. These aren't directly related with the flight line, but point at a system that's stretching its capacity.
Me too. Usually the pilots will mention it if they receive an RA, though. I think TCAS might even be disabled (or nerfed?) at low altitudes like this -- not positive, though.
From what I've read, it sounds like this airport is not equipped with the ATC-equivalent of TCAS -- which I think would have been sounding all kinds of alarms (how early?) in the tower for a scenario like this.
I admire how pilots are able to communicate so concisely and professionally. No one swore at each other or ranted over the radio. Southwest didn’t drag their feet because they didn’t appreciate FedEx’s tone.
I suspect that higher stakes encourage politeness. A much lower stakes example than the OP: politics at a startup vs. at a big company.
And in fact one of the worst air disasters of all time was from a similar situation where a 747 taking off ran into another 747 that was still landing at least partially due to a communication breakdown and nonstandard phrasing between the planes and the ATC. 9/11 is the only air disaster with more casualties.
I know nothing about ATC, but to be blunt, it sounds like the controller is absolutely not paying attention and possibly even distracted with something else throughout most of the video until they realize there is a near-collision. Is there video footage of the control room that will be reviewed?
Off topic but I need to ask this. When I was flying from Austin to SLC on October 30 2022, I saw something which looked like an airplane suspended stationary in the air with black smoke billowing out of both wings.
I didn’t have the presence of mind to get a video, and I haven’t been able to find out anything about it since.
Seeing other comments fault the Southwest pilot for not starting faster, but it’s not obvious to me that there was any significant delay—a few seconds at most between lining up and starting the roll down the runway. The diagram isn’t to scale, so it’s hard to tell. I wonder how much faster an expedited departure could have been.
From TFA:
"Time 1:54, Tower: “Southwest 708, confirm on the roll?” Note that this comes 34 seconds after the previous transmission, and nearly a minute after the tower cleared Southwest for takeoff.
In that minute, the FedEx plane has covered most of the distance to the airport. Presumably the visibility is so bad that the tower can’t even see the Southwest plane sitting on the runway. So the tower controller is asking: Hey, are you moving?
Southwest immediately replies, “rolling now.”
Investigators will also want to find out what the Southwest crew was doing through this time, in the minute after saying “we’re ready” and while knowing that another plane was about to land."
They have their checklists and everything, it's not an unusual case when the plane goes to a runway and stops for a few seconds. Again, as an ATC, if you need a passenger plane to get out as fast as possible - be clear about it or don't clear them to the runway. It was also a Fedex pilot who figured what's about to happen by themselves.
Yes. The controller should have said "no delay" along with the takeoff clearance, but also given the extremely poor visibility (they couldn't even see 1/4 of the way down the runway), it shouldn't be surprising when a plane takes a few seconds longer on the runway to get situated and double check a few things.
Southwest had clearance. So they are clear, you can't rush take-off or anything. They could have been more mindful of what is around them and refused to line up if 3 miles felt like too rushed.
Why are overlapping clearances allowed (and used) by rules, regulations and local operating procedures DURING CAT III operations, is beyond me.
I don't like overlapping clearances in normal times but during CAT III operations this is insane.
Not reasonable to draw inferences from that cartoon. Who knows what data (if any at all) they are using for position or if it's to scale. Pitch is definitely wrong.
Unbelievable behavior “You have our apologies” (by this time I would have had a heart attack being the controller), “Thank you” (not a single bad word or insinuation from the pilot). What people!
1. They are trained very well to handle stressful situations calmly.
2. Knowing an incident just happened, they are probably aware of the fact that each of their words is being recorded and will be examined during the investigation. Like "don't talk to the police if you are arrested" it's wise to say as little as possible (after the danger has passed)
Yes, and you've reminded me of a very similar example[1] captured by my favourite planespotting channel. At Perth Airport, a Singapore Airlines 777 was slow to take-off, the (I'm guessing trainee) controller ordered a landing Qantas 787 to go around, froze momentarily, causing her supervisor to intervene to hold the Singapore 777 whom the trainee then held for wake turbulence.
While that's certainly possible, in my very limited experience, the more dangerous things are the more professional the response.
Sure there's the initial surprise, sure there's the post-mortem release of emotional energy, but after the initial surprise it's all business. The pilots are communicating with each other, there's a lot of information, and tasks, to keep them occupied.
Relentless training for situations that "never happen" means that professionals go into a low-emotion state, and rely on memorized behaviours and checklists, coupled with intense intellectual evaluation.
See the audio from sullys Hudson landing. It's all simple communication, coupled with drilled responses (restart engine, start apu etc) being driven from cool analytical data processing - what will work, what won't etc.
Training the emotion (panic, fear etc) out of you is the very goal of training for extremely intense, life threatening, situations.
If the cockpit recordings are released it'll be interesting to know if I'm right, but the level of professionalism displayed by the FedEx crew suggests to me that they are both highly trained, and worthy of that training. Congratulations to them and their trainers.
> It's very likely they said some less polite words like 'WTF ARE THEY DOING' before turning on the mic and acting all professional
Reminds me of Air Canada 759[1]:
> The pilot of United Airlines 1 (UA001), the first in line for takeoff, interrupted the radio traffic at 11:56:01 p.m. and asked "Where is this guy going? He's on the taxiway."
I am fairly certain that those choice words where exchanged at the water cooler at a FedEx brake room way after the incident. And even then I'd suspect the attention to be more on the "dear god, we have all been lucky to still breathe today* instead of cursing at some other people. That kind of behavior is what you get from real professionals.
My neighbor is a FedEx pilot. Based on the stories I've heard the pilots probably used very colorful language in the cockpit but were screaming for the sheer joy of finally getting to do something exciting now that they've retired from the Air Force or Navy. That's what the "Thank you" to ATC was for.
The conversation that we hear off the tape is only when the mic is keyed. There was probably a lot of discussion going on in the cockpit when the microphone was not live.
I believe it’s standard practice to publish tapes of the radio transmissions, but not from the cockpit voice recorders. They do publish a transcript though, if it is relevant.
The question in the post title is the first sub-bullet in the article. It is itself a quote from the transcript and gets to the heart of the human error that almost caused a disaster here. The article does confirm who said what when by having the transcript in the article. Not at all clickbaity.
If the goal is to improve safety firing people is almost always the wrong response. That juvenile preoccupation with punishment only serves to create a culture where mistakes are hidden rather than understood.
It's also an extremely niche field, with a very high attrition rate in terms of training, and few people are truly capable of working in that industry. There will be retraining for certain, and a reduction in pay/rank. They certainly do not need to lose their job over a mishap, while an egregious one, it is still a trainable moment.
How do you retrain someone not to tell 2 planes they can use the same runway with repeated confirmations based on the fact that he thinks 3 miles is far enough away? At that point are we certain its not Alzheimer's?
While I 100% think the controller in this situation made a terrible judgement call and likely shouldn't be working planes anymore, it's worth noting that that there are very specific regulations on multiple planes using the same runway (called Same Runway Separation). Specifically, for these types of aircraft (SRS Category III), the departing plane needs to be at least 6000ft down the runway and airborne by the time the arriving plane crosses the runway threshold. Heck, for smaller general aviation aircraft, you can have a plane land when another has landed and is still on the runway, as long as they are 3000ft past the threshold.
A different regulation (applicable only to radar environments, which AUS is) allows for a departure if an arriving aircraft is 2+ miles away from the runway, as long as there is at least 3 miles of separation within 1 min after takeoff.
All that being said -- it is possible to execute a squeeze play like this if everything is perfect, but you need the departure to go IMMEDIATELY. Trying this in low visibility was extremely reckless and incompetent.
That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity.
In the linked communication you can see that he knew both planes were incoming on the same runway and confirmed his brain dead plan repeatedly to both crews. Even telling SW that they could take off because Fedex was 3 miles out. At any reasonable speed this is virtually no time. At 165 it would be a little over 1 minute. Since the critical moment came around the 2 minute mark it seems likely that in addition to any other faults he also can't estimate distance.
Even after it went south or shall we say southwest he was never capable of recovering in any timely fashion as evidenced by the Fedex crew taking over his job. As a result of his incompetence everyone would have died. The only meaningful fact he could have ascertained in order to correct his plan would have been to understand that planes go fast. At this juncture retraining him seems like a poor decision. He's a hazard.
> That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity.
Let's assume that you are right. I don't think I can be as confident about anything as you are. Especially not before an investigation, but let's pretend that you are right: the controller in question is an imbecile who need to be fired immediately.
How is that not a process problem? How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? And if he is an idiot, which I don't believe but we are in a hypothetical, how many others there are?
> How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that?
If you see r/ATC, he's been shuffled between locations and this isn't his first screw-up. He manages to stay employed through claiming discrimination under EEO when performance issues come up. There's even another past incident from another airport featuring him.
Luckily, this may be the nail in the coffin that even US Critical Race Theory policies can't prevent, and it happened without any loss of life.
From the responses of those who have worked ATC, lazy & incompetent would be more accurate than idiot. He sounds checked out, and isn't really thinking about his choices.
I would apply that logic to anyone responsible for honest mistakes. Mistakes are a valuable opportunity for learning, and learning doesn’t thrive in a culture of fear.
The same system should definitely exist in law enforcement, to the extent that the mistakes are made in good faith. I would argue that a good percentage of the “mistakes” made by police in the US are malicious in nature, akin to ATC intentionally putting planes in danger. Our law enforcement culture in the US is so rotten that mistakes are neither punished nor understood.
To your point that ATC is notoriously awful for not firing people, I would say their safety record speaks for itself. The impulse for punitive vengeance is what puts lives at risk, not ATC's safety culture.
When we have major line-of-fire incidents on our sites that can very possibly result in loss of life, generally you do get the boot. And it is certainly not 'hidden', you get black listed and company-wide communications are sent as a result. People certainly do learn from these kinds of mistakes, but usually the person at the centre of it goes for a walk.
A very pertinent one. The comment you responded to talked about how aviation achieves their stellar safety record. You told us that in your other industry (now we know it is mining) things are done differently. So it is fair to ask: How is that going for you? What are the results? Are you safer or less safe than aviation?
I wouldn't say that's a given. For example, a similar incident occurred at Rhode Island in 1999, and the air traffic controller responsible was not fired -- merely sent for retraining before being returned to service. Like this incident, it was another flight crew that prevented the situation from becoming worse, by rejecting their takeoff clearance -- something the pilot-in-command of this Southwest flight should have done when told about a heavy 767 three miles out.
What if there's pressure from airlines to reduce late flights and increase the amount of traffic airports can handle resulting in ATC cutting margins on separation? Would it really be the controller's fault if their job performance is dependent on getting planes into the air as quickly as possible?
> Would it really be the controller's fault if their job performance is dependent on getting planes into the air as quickly as possible?
Yes. Their primary job is safety, speedy traffic flow is secondary to that objective. Cutting corners would mean abandoning pretty much the entire purpose of bothering with ATC versus letting pilots figure it out themselves.
This is completely correct. One of the first sentences in the 7110.65 (the FAA document governing ATC rules in the US, often referred to as "the book" by controllers) is "the primary purpose of the ATC system is to prevent a collision involving aircraft operating in the system." Loss of adequate separation between aircraft (called a "deal") is much worse for a controller's career than being inefficient.
In a world where airline regulators weren't captured by the industries they regulate, this would be iron-clad. In the real world, where humans live and make decisions, not so much.
When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway.
So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land". Which also means that if you are piloting the landing plane then at your decision height you have to go around.
Also when someone is cleared to land no-one can be given a permission to enter the runway.
There is one clearance that kinda-sorta allows which is "BEHIND landing Boeing 737, line up and wait BEHIND". It intentionally has "BEHIND" before and after the call to be extra clear that the waiting pilot has to confirm that the plane has passed their nose and they can enter the runway while the landing plane is on rollout. But that plane can not be given a takeoff clearance before the plane on the rollout has exited the runway.
We were told that the americans do it differently and I've always found it dangerous.