Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 324 posts

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#111

Post by cucumber3732842 »

rekrsiv wrote: post #89
pc86 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages How many planes land at LGA in the middle the night? One controller overnight is completely reasonable.

Can a single human being reliably and robustly maintain a safety-critical system alone under any circumstances, ever? Ever?

There are millions of people who are self employed in an industry where they could be maimed or killed if they screw up who manage to make it to retirement.

I think the better question is how you get a system in which people are only responsible for any one facet to get the same performance out of people that a painter can get out of himself when he's setting up his own ladder that he personally has to climb on.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#112

Post by busterarm »

anonymars wrote: post #76
busterarm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the shortage, which that doesn't address. Quite the opposite, in fact. Was in three different unions. Union didn't do squat for me. Mainly kept my wages down and gave the friends of the union rep the best shifts.

Firing them all broke the pipeline https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495739

When I don't show up to work I expect to get fired and not rehired too.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#113

Post by mannykannot »

arjie wrote: post #94
jakelazaroff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing a staffing shortage.

Is he? I can see the number of hours worked as evidence of a shortage, but prima facie it is not obvious that a single controller handling both ground and air is evidence of a 'shortage' if it is routinely considered feasible in the industry. It could just be an efficiency choice for low-traffic times. Based on some googling since I'm not an expert it seems this is called 'position combining' in the US and is pretty…

"...routinely considered feasible..."

What we are seeing here is the normalization of deviance.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#114

Post by yeeetz »

annexrichmond wrote: post #104
antoineMoPa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Half the comments in this thread are not following the guidelines

yours included buddy

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#115

Post by xeonmc »

ndiddy wrote: post #5

I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted…

> I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change.

I am reminded of the Uberlingen disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#116

Post by mmmrtl »

krisoft wrote: post #88
eviks wrote: post #69

With all the advances in technology, can there be no navigation app that can just tell you you're on a collision course instead of relying exclusivly on playing broken phone between flying and driving meatbags via a sitting one?

There is actually a set of lights which should have displayed red towards the trucks. Were they not operating correctly, or did the driver ignore them is one of the questions the investigation will answer. The system is called Runway Status Lights. And in case there is a disagreement between the ATC clearance and the lights the drivers are supposed to not enter the runway. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/r…

RWSL were red in the video. https://viewfromthewing.com/__trashed-13/ So maybe we'll be looking at training and fatigue for the firefighters too

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#117

Post by rglover »

inaros wrote: post #55
ndiddy wrote: post #5

I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted…

Hopefully some commercial professional pilots will comment on this thread, but if you go to sites where they normally hang out like: https://www.airlinepilotforums.com You will see many are terrified ( in commercial pilot terms...) of flying into La Guardia or JFK...

> https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-fir...

Just a quick read/speculation based on the linked forum post...

Short of insane visibility conditions that prevented them from seeing the plane coming, the firetruck operator seems to be the liable party (beyond the airport for understaffing controllers—this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts but that's still no excuse for having a solo controller at that busy of an airport, especially at night).

The controller in question seems to have caught their mistake quickly and reversed the order instead asking the firetruck to stop (but for some reason, this wasn't heard).

Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#118

Post by bombcar »

pc86 wrote: post #105
penultimatename wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if an aircraft needs to land due to an emergency? It’s amazing things work as well as they do, the system relies on only one thing going wrong at a time. This accident was an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.

Every accident is an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.[0] I'm going to pretend to know exactly what would happen in that precise scenario but I'm confident most commercial pilots get enough training to be able to handle it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

One of the things you learn as a pilot is how to recognize that you need to go into emergency mode if you will. Call it high-alert if you want.

You need to recognize when something is out of the ordinary and treat it as an emergency (perhaps not a literal pan-pan/mayday emergency) sooner rather than later, and do things that may end up to have been unnecessary (like executing a go-around because emergency vehicles were on the move).

One controller on two frequencies is another example - that works fine in normal situations, but during an emergency response, perhaps the channels should be mixed; giving the pilots in the air a chance to hear the incorrect clearance onto their runway.

After all, an active runway is really more of an "air" control thing than a ground one.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#119

Post by bombcar »

pc86 wrote: post #101
inaros wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An empty tower at La Guardia with a bunch of airplanes in the air not getting a reply to their calls is Die Hard 2 stuff. Spare me the Pete Hegseth school of ATC...

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The GP is literally about a lone controller in the tower having a medical episode and what would happen after that.

The pilots would execute untowered approach procedures, a small airport with little to no traffic and VFR flight you may self-announce on frequency, a larger airport you go back to approach, etc.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#120

Post by rekrsiv »

duped wrote: post #108
ndiddy wrote: post #5

I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted…

It bothers me that everyone is laser focused on poor ATC staffing and working conditions (which is very valid, don't get me wrong). I think airport capacity should be fixed depending on ATC staffing. We need to have less air travel. The way I think about it is this: substandard ATC staffing is just as bad as lacking jetways or damaged runways. When the airport can't land planes because of physical capacity constraint…

You are correct. Robustness requires a system that is working within it's tolerance margin, and stressing that inevitably leads to failure. A fault-tolerant system in this case would require a large amount of redundant humans. Unfortunately, the capitalist mindset prevents accepting any amount of "waste" as tolerable, which makes a robust system impossible to implement over time. Every system touched by a capitalist optimizer will eventually fail.

The idea that waste must be reduced is killing society, and this mindset must be addressed first before any other safety-critical system can be made reliable again.

Post reply on HN