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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

#231

Post by dgoldstein0 »

gambiting wrote: post #226
anovikov wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is facilitated by the fact that in some airports, taxiways and runways are similar and sometimes even used interchangeably (!), i.e. a runway may be remarked as taxiway and vice versa. So it's not 'how can he be so dumb' moment, in some case you have no way to tell the difference unless you just know.

It feels like it could be solved incredibly easily by a row of lights at the beginning/end of both the taxiway and the runway, bright red for taxiway, bright green for the runway. If you are attempting to land on the strip marked red, then you are doing something wrong. In case that the taxiway is legitimately used for landing, change the colours around. I guess it hasn't been done for "reasons", I'd be quite interes…

this sounds like the start of a good idea, but we should choose something that works for colorblind people and red/green colorblind people too.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#232

Post by MarkMc »

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…

What about an audio warning: "Alert! You are about to land on a taxiway!". Wouldn't that be useful?

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#233

Post by Domenic_S »

gambiting wrote: post #226
anovikov wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is facilitated by the fact that in some airports, taxiways and runways are similar and sometimes even used interchangeably (!), i.e. a runway may be remarked as taxiway and vice versa. So it's not 'how can he be so dumb' moment, in some case you have no way to tell the difference unless you just know.

It feels like it could be solved incredibly easily by a row of lights at the beginning/end of both the taxiway and the runway, bright red for taxiway, bright green for the runway. If you are attempting to land on the strip marked red, then you are doing something wrong. In case that the taxiway is legitimately used for landing, change the colours around. I guess it hasn't been done for "reasons", I'd be quite interes…

It is done pretty much like that. PDF warning, page 31: https://www.faa.gov/airports/southern/airport_safety/part139...

Taxiways are marked with blue lights.

Here's a video of a night landing on the same runway, the approach lighting is unmistakable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMtMYUGjnQ

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#235

Post by gambiting »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #231
gambiting wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like it could be solved incredibly easily by a row of lights at the beginning/end of both the taxiway and the runway, bright red for taxiway, bright green for the runway. If you are attempting to land on the strip marked red, then you are doing something wrong. In case that the taxiway is legitimately used for landing, change the colours around. I guess it hasn't been done for "reasons", I'd be quite interes…

this sounds like the start of a good idea, but we should choose something that works for colorblind people and red/green colorblind people too.

Stupid question - can you be certified as a commercial pilot if you are colourblind?

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#236

Post by cycrutchfield »

dba7dba wrote: post #195
csours wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SFO is said to be a somewhat abnormal/difficult approach [0]. This could cause stress and fractured attention in the pilot. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there was some other complicating factor. Planes don't usually crash (or nearly crash) without several safety factors being breached. 0: https://jethead.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/how-do-you-land-at-...

When the Asiana flight 214 crash landed in SFO in 2013, there was a blog post from a pilot who claimed to be a Lufthansa Air pilot. He wrote that because of city of San Francisco's unusually stringent noise mitigation rule for airliners flying over the city to land at the SFO airport, an airliner has to make a very steep descent from an altitude higher than normal. So instead of bringing down an airliner gradually, a…

Don't planes approach SFO from over the water? I don't think any planes are landing over San Francisco

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#237

Post by grecy »

watson wrote: post #176

English is not my native language, but shouldn't the headline have read "SFO near miss would have triggered aviation disaster"? "Might" seems to indicate that something else happened afterwards as a possible result of the near miss

I agree.

English is my first language, and the more I read the headline, the more I see it as

"Something terrible happened, and the near miss is possibly the cause".

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#238

Post by briandear »

anovikov wrote: post #212
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…

This is facilitated by the fact that in some airports, taxiways and runways are similar and sometimes even used interchangeably (!), i.e. a runway may be remarked as taxiway and vice versa. So it's not 'how can he be so dumb' moment, in some case you have no way to tell the difference unless you just know.

It’s SFO though. And he’s an airline captain, so he should know.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#239

Post by briandear »

gambiting wrote: post #235
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this sounds like the start of a good idea, but we should choose something that works for colorblind people and red/green colorblind people too.

Stupid question - can you be certified as a commercial pilot if you are colourblind?

You can’t even be certificated as a Private Pilot if you are colorblind.

Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster

#240

Post by mckoss »

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).

Controllers in the tower do not have a good visual perspective to see runway alignment. I don't think they would have caught this.

At night, there are many visual cues to see the runway environment - it sounds to me like this complacent pilot ignored many red flags and was about to drive his plane on top of those on the taxiway.

A big heavy airliner can't just stop its decent instantly; it's a good thing that pilot on the ground chimed in when he did.

I betcha the landing pilot won't have a job pretty soon.

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