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Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

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Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#91

Post by gosub100 »

db48x wrote: post #30
gosub100 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the best things they could add would be an electronic drawing tablet for ATC to draw a flight path on a map and pipe it directly into the pilots EFIS or HUD. It's not fool-proof, but in high density airspace, it seems more efficient to be able to draw a curve and press a button than try to verbally describe it. Of course one major pitfall is you cannot draw in 3D.

That would be slower and ironically less precise than what we already have, which is navigation by named waypoints.

and in this case, the pilot loaded the wrong waypoint (likely from another runway) and flew toward it. It's not slower, either. have you ever entered a waypoint into a flight computer? they aren't exactly built for speed.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#92

Post by gosub100 »

bigbuppo wrote: post #41
gosub100 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the best things they could add would be an electronic drawing tablet for ATC to draw a flight path on a map and pipe it directly into the pilots EFIS or HUD. It's not fool-proof, but in high density airspace, it seems more efficient to be able to draw a curve and press a button than try to verbally describe it. Of course one major pitfall is you cannot draw in 3D.

They already have something better than that. It's called a published departure procedure that pilots are supposed to follow. In this case, one of the pilots failed to follow the published departure procedure and came close to being on the next season of Mayday: Air Disaster.

you haven't shown why thats any better.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#93

Post by IshKebab »

evil-olive wrote: post #59
IshKebab wrote: post #7

Kind of blows my mind how primitive this whole system still is. Audio quality is really bad. They're sending instructions by voice. The way they know who is speaking is by just saying their callsign with every message. There's got to be a better solution surely?

> Audio quality is really bad. as the video says at the beginning, the audio is sourced from LiveATC, which is a network of volunteers with their own radio equipment [0] who tune in to ATC frequencies and then livestream them. those volunteers are by necessity not at the airport itself, but some distance away. and the audio is compressed to 16kbps MP3 for livestreaming purposes. this means the sound quality we're hea…

There seems to be a lack of imagination in a lot of these replies. Everyone is thinking that the only alternative to voice directions only is text messages? You only need to look at satnav to see one obvious alternative.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#94

Post by IshKebab »

gosub100 wrote: post #91
db48x wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be slower and ironically less precise than what we already have, which is navigation by named waypoints.

and in this case, the pilot loaded the wrong waypoint (likely from another runway) and flew toward it. It's not slower, either. have you ever entered a waypoint into a flight computer? they aren't exactly built for speed.

So this would have helped because the plane would have automatically loaded the correct route.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#95

Post by db48x »

IshKebab wrote: post #94
gosub100 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and in this case, the pilot loaded the wrong waypoint (likely from another runway) and flew toward it. It's not slower, either. have you ever entered a waypoint into a flight computer? they aren't exactly built for speed.

So this would have helped because the plane would have automatically loaded the correct route.

Making the traffic controller load a flight plan into the plane’s computer merely changes who will make the mistake. If you want to suggest changes, suggest something that actually has a chance of reducing the rate of errors.

Besides, pilots don’t just blindly follow the waypoints on their computer. The pilots would have spent half an hour before they even got in the airplane reviewing the plan for the flight. This includes reviewing the published departure information for the airport. In that briefing they would have specifically noted that the direction they will turn after takeoff depends on which runway the tower tells them to take off from. They cannot necessarily guess which runway that’ll be in advance.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#96

Post by dweekly »

anonymousiam wrote: post #84
dweekly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a commercial pilot, your response is a little glib and kind of ignores the meaningful advances that have been made with D-ATIS, ADS-B In, CPDLC, DUATS, XM weather, etc. Voice is absolutely not perfect, analog FM audio often comes through garbled, pilots have to wait their turn on a busy single-user channel for timely information, etc. This doesn't even begin to touch on the complexities that will come from full in…

Just a nit, but aircraft/airport communications use AM not FM. This is deliberate, because FM's "capture effect" would mask other transmissions that inevitably occur when two parties randomly press PTT at the same time. With AM, you'll hear a tone, which is the difference frequency between the two transmitters, so you'll know that somebody missed something, and it will probably be repeated. If it were FM only, it wou…

I appreciate the correction, anonymousiam! You are absolutely right - it's AM and for exactly the reasons you articulate.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#97

Post by dang »

7thaccount wrote: post #16
pedalpete wrote: post #13

Is this significantly different from the near mid-air collisions that happen on a regular basis? The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound, and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn. These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.

Yeah. It's a super stressful job that doesn't pay well normally and now these people are having to drive Uber on the side to pay their mortgages and put food on the table. I'm definitely not flying until this is sorted out.

Sorry for the offtopicness but would you mind emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com? I want to arrange for a repost of something you submitted.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#98

Post by 7thaccount »

dang wrote: post #97
7thaccount wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. It's a super stressful job that doesn't pay well normally and now these people are having to drive Uber on the side to pay their mortgages and put food on the table. I'm definitely not flying until this is sorted out.

Sorry for the offtopicness but would you mind emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com? I want to arrange for a repost of something you submitted.

Me? For this comment or another? I can't imagine anything I've posted is that interesting lol.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#99

Post by Covenant0028 »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #90
Covenant0028 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the people in this instance realise they're an essential service for the economy and that without them, a lot of people could actually die. So they probably see their role as being more than simply working for the people of low integrity.

In which case it’s their duty to end it. But I don’t see a million people marching in Washington, I don’t see food deliveries failing to reach the White House. I don’t see airports simply close down.

Again, there's probably a sense of responsibility towards the people moving through the airports who otherwise would be facing much greater risk to their lives.

As a non American who's having to transit the country during this period, I've nothing but respect for the individuals who're actually doing their jobs and keeping everyone (including me) safe without getting a penny for this vital work.

They could go on a strike and bring all airlines to a halt, but as a brown skinned person, I would then be risking a visit to "Alligator Alcatraz" or some other demented place because I failed the leave the country on the day I was supposed to. So again, glad they're not doing that.

Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]

#100

Post by wlonkly »

rkomorn wrote: post #81
cyberax wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want you to very carefully consider the better options. How about digital HD audio at least? In parallel with legacy analog audio. The next step is visual alerts for pilots if the ATC tries to call _them_. You know, like our phones can do for nearly 150 years. Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a…

> Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a major stumbling block for me. FWIW (and this may not be applicable to you, or you may already be doing it) I found that listening to ATC via LiveATC for my home airport during my car commutes really helped me with radio skills. If you don't commute, I'd still sug…

This reminded me of when I read license plates aloud on my commute to learn the phonetic alphabet when I was a student pilot.
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