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Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

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Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#161

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.

Opposite question: do the heroes get awards of any sort?

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#162

I 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…

Newark and LaGuardia are just as packed. The nyc airspace is just over used.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#163
post #114

Earlier 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.

> lighting is 80 year old technology

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

#164

Are 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…

#1 sort of already exists, it’s called progressive taxi: https://www.skybrary.aero/articles/progressive-taxi-instruct...

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#165

Earlier 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?

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

#166
post #165

Earlier 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...

That one I'm well aware of, but in his case part of the disaster already happened. I'm asking about pre-disaster (preventive) situations like this one.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#167

Earlier 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 much more/less often do those ten $10 light bulbs go out?

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

#168

For 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…

> but apparently NOT at the intersection inquisition

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22in+question%22

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#169

I 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…

after reading your comment, I was surprised to learn that JFK did indeed land the most international passengers in 2021.

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.

Honestly the "Shit!" is good communication. Breaking composure and normalcy can ensure everyone hearing the message treats it as urgent. That might make the difference when seconds are on the line.
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