Live data from Hacker News

JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

avherald.com

311–320 of 515 posts

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re clearance/cause: VASA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fItu5qM7QfE also couldn't make it out, but it sounds like the Coast Guard Dash 8 got a not really perfect taxi instruction (neither "hold short" nor "line up and wait") to one of the other C* intersections leading onto 34R while a Delta flight occupied C1, but entered the runway anyway. The A350 got a proper clearance it read back correctly. Also looks like all…

Whether it was perfect or not, there are only a few words/phrases that allow an aircraft to cross the hold short bars at an airport with an active control tower. "Cross", "line up and wait", and "cleared for takeoff" are pretty much it. Runway incursions are very dangerous, as this incident shows, and pilots must be very sure they have clearance before entering a runway. If anything is ambiguous in an instruction, pi…

Is "line up and wait" really the new approved terminology? Way back when I was a PP student, it was "taxi into position runway XX and hold. Acknowledge hold."

Line up and wait sounds like something you tell preschoolers to do :-)

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#312
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not really. Any passenger plane design is supposed to be able to evacuate in 90 seconds. They had several minutes (at least) to get off that plane before the fire spread to the cabin.

Looking at the videos, the plane was literally doused in burning jet fuel as it was decelerating at high speed. I still find that very impressive for a plane built out of ultimately flammable materials (carbon fiber).

I would expect similar performance from any plane, whether aluminum or composite.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it was perfect or not, there are only a few words/phrases that allow an aircraft to cross the hold short bars at an airport with an active control tower. "Cross", "line up and wait", and "cleared for takeoff" are pretty much it. Runway incursions are very dangerous, as this incident shows, and pilots must be very sure they have clearance before entering a runway. If anything is ambiguous in an instruction, pi…

Is "line up and wait" really the new approved terminology? Way back when I was a PP student, it was "taxi into position runway XX and hold. Acknowledge hold." Line up and wait sounds like something you tell preschoolers to do :-)

Line up and wait (meaning, on the runway, prior to actual takeoff clearance) is very common during busy periods. This is in America.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Human to human open discussion is superior to computer to computer in the business of flying/navigation. Why? Human to human leaves room for error and misinterpretation.

Not really. If an instruction is unclear the pilot will ask again for a repeat. Or if the instruments show everything to look normal but the plane doesn’t feel right, the pilot will correct it, a computer will not. Think of the 737 Max whose computers crashed two planes because of incorrect sensor data being fed to them. The pilots there tried to rescue the planes while the planes were following their logic, which wa…

> If an instruction is unclear the pilot will ask again for a repeat.

Except when they don't, and confirmation bias themselves into doing the wrong thing. The most likely cause of a plane crash is pilot error, and runway incursions happen shockingly often [1][2][3][4]. The only reason there hasn't been a Tenerife-style disaster is sheer luck.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b26NcJCLZl4

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AbpxqtXcPk

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI2rJhdvguc

4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPJjw68RI2w (the pilots did everything right here, it was the controller who screwed up!)

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#315

Definitely better links than Daily Mirror out there, avherald.com unfortunately overwhelmed, but in terms of discussion: - Crazy how well the carbon fiber A350 held up given that it seems to have landed pretty much directly on a Dash 8 (RIP Coast Guard team). Looks like trading long term flammability for initial rigidity lived up to the design intent. - Excellent evacuation job, especially as it looks like on some vi…

>Crazy how well the carbon fiber A350 held up given that it seems to have landed pretty much directly on a Dash 8 (RIP Coast Guard team). Looks like trading long term flammability for initial rigidity lived up to the design intent.

This will be the real story to come out of the incident. It was still an open question as to whether composite airframes were a good idea for civil aviation due to the fire risk. I imagine Airbus marketing teams started popping champagne corks the moment all passengers were safely accounted for.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It crashes? But honestly, how would that happen? And close enough to a landing strip to land evacuate the plane?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_797

We talk about the flamability difference between a carbon-composite and aluminium hull design. That fire had what, almost 20 minutes to burn before the cabin flashed?

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Members of my family require medication (epipen, some various pills), and I keep that along with a flashlight (in case I need to administer in pitch black) in a small haversack. I would probably try to take that with me, as I would hate to survive the crash but then have a fatal medical event in the aftermath and not have the tools. I do feel conflicted since the no luggage mantra has been drilled in for decades.

>> I would probably try to take that with me, as I would hate to survive the crash but then have a fatal medical event in the aftermath and not have the tools. But you might just die in the fire yourself, prioritizing a hypothetical emergency over a real one. There would also be plenty of medical personnel present once you get off the plane, they probably won't let you leave the scene without talking to one.

> But you might just die in the fire yourself, prioritizing a hypothetical emergency over a real one

The Two Failure Fallacy is a fatal flaw of human reasoning. It's almost never correct to engineer anything on the assumption of two bad things happening simultaneously. You do your analysis based on individual/uncorrelated failure modes. And only then do you make design choices (c.f. "defense in depth", "redundancy", etc...) about how much the interactions overlap and what the tradeoffs are.

In this case, duh. Positing that emergency medical personnel are somehow unable to handle an allergy attack is silly.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it was perfect or not, there are only a few words/phrases that allow an aircraft to cross the hold short bars at an airport with an active control tower. "Cross", "line up and wait", and "cleared for takeoff" are pretty much it. Runway incursions are very dangerous, as this incident shows, and pilots must be very sure they have clearance before entering a runway. If anything is ambiguous in an instruction, pi…

Is "line up and wait" really the new approved terminology? Way back when I was a PP student, it was "taxi into position runway XX and hold. Acknowledge hold." Line up and wait sounds like something you tell preschoolers to do :-)

"Line up and wait" is, historically, the ICAO phraseology, which the FAA adopted (and ditched the "taxi into position and talk for thirty more seconds and block comms" phrase). The phrase adoption went into effect Oct 2010 in the States.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re clearance/cause: VASA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fItu5qM7QfE also couldn't make it out, but it sounds like the Coast Guard Dash 8 got a not really perfect taxi instruction (neither "hold short" nor "line up and wait") to one of the other C* intersections leading onto 34R while a Delta flight occupied C1, but entered the runway anyway. The A350 got a proper clearance it read back correctly. Also looks like all…

Whether it was perfect or not, there are only a few words/phrases that allow an aircraft to cross the hold short bars at an airport with an active control tower. "Cross", "line up and wait", and "cleared for takeoff" are pretty much it. Runway incursions are very dangerous, as this incident shows, and pilots must be very sure they have clearance before entering a runway. If anything is ambiguous in an instruction, pi…

Absolutely right!

Point was that if the taxi clearance didn't include "hold (short of 34R)" it might be seen as contributing factor in line with ICAO[1] or FAA recommendations.

Also quite terrifying that, given all the equipment at Haneda and according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NbVdIoJsHY, around 2:45, with taxi lights fully visible at 2:53, the DH8 was lined up on the runway for more than a minute before being run over by the A350.

But as you say, preliminary report should already have a clear timeline of the tower tapes.

1: https://www.icao.int/safety/runwaysafety/documents%20and%20t...

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it was perfect or not, there are only a few words/phrases that allow an aircraft to cross the hold short bars at an airport with an active control tower. "Cross", "line up and wait", and "cleared for takeoff" are pretty much it. Runway incursions are very dangerous, as this incident shows, and pilots must be very sure they have clearance before entering a runway. If anything is ambiguous in an instruction, pi…

Is "line up and wait" really the new approved terminology? Way back when I was a PP student, it was "taxi into position runway XX and hold. Acknowledge hold." Line up and wait sounds like something you tell preschoolers to do :-)

"position and hold" was the old phraseology in the US. It changed to "line up and wait" on 2010/09/30 to match ICAO standards and because "hold (on the runway)" might be confused with "hold short (of a runway/taxiway), or "hold position (wherever you are now)".

https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/luaw

Post reply on HN