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SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

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Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#171

Post by vacri »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
wfunction wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! That raises the question, (a) why is there no kind of warning system for when you're about to land on the wrong runway (there's a GPS system in the aircraft that knows where you're going, right?) and (b) why is the pilot (or at least co-pilot) never looking at a map on final approach? Is it really that dangerous for anyone to take a quick glance?

When flying visually (VFR), taxiway lighting and runway lighting are visually very different. Taxiway lighting is almost always blue, whereas runway lighting is white (with any displaced threshold marked with red lights). In daylight, the markings on the runway are unmistakably different. I'm not instrument rated but my understanding is that with ILS, instrument approaches can handle multiple parallel runways precise…

So many people use 'begs the question' as 'raises the question' now that it's a valid meaning for the phrase.

EDIT: To the downvoters: I don't think you understand how human language works.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#172

Post by 0xbear »

cyberferret wrote: post #54
wfunction wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! That raises the question, (a) why is there no kind of warning system for when you're about to land on the wrong runway (there's a GPS system in the aircraft that knows where you're going, right?) and (b) why is the pilot (or at least co-pilot) never looking at a map on final approach? Is it really that dangerous for anyone to take a quick glance?

Yes, autolanding, or if the pilot was using ILS (Instrument Landing System), then this problem would almost never happen, as they would be aware there was a problem. However, most pilots eschew automation especially on short finals, and prefer the 'hand fly' the aircraft in so that they can maintain complete control over the aircraft. Not a bad thing, and pilots want to actually fly the plane at crucial times. When h…

Why not put a big ass array of red lights to indicate where not to land though?

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#174

Post by jakub_g »

StavrosK wrote: post #16
mc32 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tense/mood is wrong. It implies it could have been the cause of something that did happen rather than it having had a possibility of causing something that did not happen. Text of article has correct tense: "In what one aviation expert called a near-miss of what _could have been_ the largest aviation disaster ever..."

That's exactly right, I parsed the title as "a great aviation disaster happened, and the cause could be an SFO near miss".

Being non-native English speaker, I didn't notice the subtle distinction - but it makes sense now with the explanations. Thanks for your comments.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#175

Post by PhasmaFelis »

wfunction wrote: post #76
cyberferret wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of scale. Even on a modern HSI, the difference in distance between the runway and the parallel taxiway is probably the width of the indicator icon. Very hard to see on instruments. Much easier to see by looking out the windscreen.

I can't tell if my expectations are just too high, but the impression I'm getting from all your answers is that pilots just don't have a dynamically updating (i.e. digital) map. It seems like everything is a bunch of numbers the poor pilots have to crunch or ticks that they have to count correctly or sheets of paper they have to pass to each other with diagrams. Why in the world is the system so ancient in 2017? Goog…

In their defense, I would guess that making such a system 100% reliable and unintrusive may be a lot harder than we realize. It's not uncommon for Google Maps to be off by a few blocks for 10 seconds or more, and that could very easily be fatal if you're using it to land an airplane.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#177

Post by saurik »

wfunction wrote: post #96
saurik wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what is so wrong with the transmission quality in that MP3. The issues I hear sound like they are simply due to trying to transmit from an extremely noisy environment (the cockpit of an airplane); they are mitigating the pilot's voice being entirely drowned in the background noise by placing the microphone right next to their mouth, but that then causes the sound of their breath to be extremely not…

I wasn't complaining about the transmission quality, I was just trying to understand the parent comment. The person who complained about the former was someone else.

Sorry; I misunderstood (and to be honest even after my tenth reread am still having a difficult time parsing...) the end of your comment about the "issue" :(.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#178

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dx034 wrote: post #120
narrator wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Where's this guy going" unidentified person on the channel prevented the worst accident in aviation history. Great Job! Give that guy a medal and a movie.

It's likely that the controller would've seen it as well after the Air Canada pilot indicated that he saw planes on what he believed was the runway. Even if not, the pilot would've probably aborted the landing since he saw the other aircrafts. So it was certainly a dangerous situation but I doubt that a crash would've happened without that pilot's comment (it was certainly helpful though).

Yeah. When reading about modern air disasters, you often hear that five different things had to go wrong at once for them to happen. In this case, one or two things went wrong, the rest of them went right, and everything was fine.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#179

Post by Broken_Hippo »

abritinthebay wrote: post #109
WalterBright wrote: post #93

In the early 1960s, a pilot mistook a WW2 airfield for Heathrow, and landed his 707 on it, barely stopping before the end of the runway. The runway being too short to lift a 707, mechanics stripped everything out of it they could to reduce the weight - seats, interiors, etc. They put barely enough gas in it to hop over to Heathrow, and managed to get it there safely. The pilot who landed there was cashiered.

“Cashiered”?

I had to look it up as well :)

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#180

Post by laydn »

wfunction wrote: post #21
ddeck wrote: post #14

Attempts to take off from or land on taxiways are alarmingly common, including those by Harrison Ford: Harrison Ford won't face disciplinary action for landing on a taxiway at John Wayne Airport [1] Serious incident: Finnair A340 attempts takeoff from Hong Kong taxiway [2] HK Airlines 737 tries to take off from taxiway [3] Passenger plane lands on the TAXIWAY instead of runway in fourth incident of its kind at Seattl…

Why in the world is this even a problem? Shouldn't what's a taxiway and what's not be indicated on maps or diagrams or something that pilots can see?

If you watch any 28R approach video for SFO on YouTube, you'll be even more surprised. Because there is no way you can mistake the taxiway for the runway. There is a huge array of lights pointing the pilot towards the runway.

I would imagine this would be more of a problem during the day because the lights are not as bright compared to the ambient light.

I would think the best way to get this detected early would be to integrate some logic into the ATC radar. As the plane gets closer to the runway (or taxiway!), it should be easy to tell where the pilot is going by looking at the track and issue an automated warning.

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