What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?
In aviation post-event reports penalizing humans has usually the least priority, unless they intentionally violated the rules. If they did so unintentionally, or because they made a mistake, usually the entire industry gets better trainings, and/or system to prevent such. I'm generalizing here a lot.
Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
161–170 of 372 posts
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#162I flew into JFK in December and was surprised the number of concurrent operations going on… landing queues of 5+ planes in the sky for the two runways, long takeoff queues, so many land operations… once you touch down it sure feels like the pilot knows they have to get that plane off the runway ASAP. Felt much more busy than I have previously going through LAX/SFO/London/Dubai. I wonder if the level of traffic at JFK…
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a street light. You aren’t going to have poles or hanging lights on a runway. It is embedded lights. That have to work without fail in extreme temps, all weathers, with planes rolling over them all day. They have to have certain visibility at different angles, they have to fail gracefully. These things are rarely ‘that’s just…’
Runway lighting is 80 year old technology; we solved all those problems long, long ago. I mean, come on. It's one thing to point out that problems are inherently complicated, but to pretend that we can't deploy something as obvious as, yes, a street light because of expense is making yourself part of the problem, not the solution.
The first gas turbine was invented in 1791
Are they cheap? Can you buy them for next day delivery?
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#164Are we're relying on pilots who are holding many many things in their heads to follow only the verbal directions of air traffic control? Two alternatives that I would think would be fairly easy to implement. 1) Google maps style directions input by air traffic control showing as well as telling the pilot what runway/path to runway to take. 2) Coloured lighting directing the pilot to the right runway via the correct p…
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
In aviation post-event reports penalizing humans has usually the least priority, unless they intentionally violated the rules. If they did so unintentionally, or because they made a mistake, usually the entire industry gets better trainings, and/or system to prevent such. I'm generalizing here a lot.
Opposite question: do the heroes get awards of any sort?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_Sullenberger#List_of_awa...
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opposite question: do the heroes get awards of any sort?
Sully got a bunch of awards (The commercial pilot who put that plane down safely on the river in NYC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_Sullenberger#List_of_awa...
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy to preach, harder to practice. When I was an intern I got to help change the blinking red light on top of a 50 story building. It’s a big deal that was scheduled weeks in advance and probably involved two dozen people, a special lightbulb and a bunch of coordination. Even among the team working it plenty of “how many X does it take to change a light bulb” jokes were told. But consider than a pilot depends on cer…
What would be better for safety? One $10000 light bulb, or ten $10 light bulbs?
How did you prove that?
If its more often, does an outage need to be detected? How do you detect that lightbulb went out?
How much does that cost?
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#168For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course. The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cr…
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#169I flew into JFK in December and was surprised the number of concurrent operations going on… landing queues of 5+ planes in the sky for the two runways, long takeoff queues, so many land operations… once you touch down it sure feels like the pilot knows they have to get that plane off the runway ASAP. Felt much more busy than I have previously going through LAX/SFO/London/Dubai. I wonder if the level of traffic at JFK…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/639826/leading-airports-...
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#170> (“Shit! Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance!”) This isn't a real quote, is it? I was surprised to read ATC losing their composure like that, but in the linked video/audio there is no utterance of Shit! that I can hear.