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‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

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Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#111

Post by imoverclocked »

kqr wrote: post #109
Dalewyn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my acquaintances used to be an ATC (air traffic controller) and has many pilot friends from back then. They all say the same thing whenever they talk about the most important thing in aviation: Have the courage to not take off. Kudos to that US Airways captain for refusing to takeoff and stay put until everyone got on the same page.

Another common thing I hear is about having the courage not to land. It's almost as if the dangerous part is low-altitude maneuvering!

Yup, an approach is a go-around with the option of landing. (Thanks Juan Brown)

However, landing is eventually assured.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#112

Post by hef19898 »

1letterunixname wrote: post #100
kochie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because adding more technology doesn’t always makes things work better. I like this idea but the problem is you’ve just added another point of failure. Sure it may avoid this situation, but how many aircraft lifted off and landed at airports in the same day? In America I’d hazard a guess at aground the tens of thousands. Any new system has to reduce the complexity or risks of flying and that’s very hard to do. I’m no…

Hand-waving about "people" == "simpler" == "better" aside, read about TCAS. Humans in the loop are a SPoF if they're there: 1. Solely to read information over a lossy, slow medium like analog radio. Digital data between ground and air systems should be the primary means of comms with voice radio as a backup channel for clarification and stating intent. 2. To flawlessly plan and avoid collisions between dozens of obje…

>> four dimensions

You're sure about that?

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#113

Post by hef19898 »

1letterunixname wrote: post #105
vlovich123 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also once you fix a software bug, it’s fixed forever (generally). Humans introduce all sorts of fun variability every time the program is run.

Expecting mechanical accuracy from humans is a fool's errand. ATC should be wearing VR goggles, visualizing approach and takeoff routing as it maps to flown with machines spotting the dangers similarly but differently from TCAS.

And the VR goggles help them read the minds of pilots about the speed in which they move their planes around on the ground, and when?

Move fast and break things has no place in aerospace nor aviation, just rolling whatever fancy new tech is there is not done for reasons. And this behavior made aviation as safe as it is today.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#114

Post by kelnos »

idlewords wrote: post #38
mynegation wrote: post #32

So I am neither a pilot nor an aviation geek, but to me it looks like, besides heavy fog, two things happened. (1) control misjudged the approach time for FedEx. 3 miles out is - what? - a minute and a half, at best at approach speed? (2) control did not expedite a takeoff for southwest so they took their sweet time rolling onto the runway and accelerating. At this day and age it is bewildering to see all of this run…

The Southwest crew here is also to blame, they knew a plane was on short final to their runway in terrible visibility and for some reason took their sweet time taking off.

Or hell, they could have taken the even-safer option and informed ATC they were going to hold until FedEx landed.

Regardless, I think it's too early to lay definitive blame until the NTSB report comes out.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#115

Post by defrost »

hef19898 wrote: post #112
1letterunixname wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand-waving about "people" == "simpler" == "better" aside, read about TCAS. Humans in the loop are a SPoF if they're there: 1. Solely to read information over a lossy, slow medium like analog radio. Digital data between ground and air systems should be the primary means of comms with voice radio as a backup channel for clarification and stating intent. 2. To flawlessly plan and avoid collisions between dozens of obje…

>> four dimensions You're sure about that?

They likely mean { X, Y, Z, T } three spatial dimensions and time which are four orthogonal dimensions.

That said, it makes the "moving in" redundant and is shy a few dimensions if you want to go full descriptive phase space diagraming given velocity and acceleration in each spatial dimension are missing.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#116

Post by Gordonjcp »

Dalewyn wrote: post #87
catminou wrote: post #46

Reminds me of a time in 1999 when a US Air crew at Rhode Island refused to takeoff in the fog when the controller insisted it was okay. Another aircraft had landed and was lost in the fog about their location, even saying they were on on an active runway and even said an aircraft just took off (over them). Animation + text here if curious: https://youtu.be/qUDFY5qlTSA

One of my acquaintances used to be an ATC (air traffic controller) and has many pilot friends from back then. They all say the same thing whenever they talk about the most important thing in aviation: Have the courage to not take off. Kudos to that US Airways captain for refusing to takeoff and stay put until everyone got on the same page.

> Have the courage to not take off.

As the old old saying goes, better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#117

Post by kqr »

bigiain wrote: post #88
bagels wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly billion dollar jets and they can't slap a gps on them to see that they're sitting on the runway.

I see aircraft (and even airport ground vehicles) on the runway all the time on my ADS-B setup. They 100% have them, just nobody was looking at them at the right time.

I find that in stressful and risky situations people stop trusting the data in front of them. They want to believe things are alright and will keep looking for new pieces of information to confirm that, while downplaying the importance of contradictory information.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#119

Post by euroderf »

mynegation wrote: post #56
Ancapistani wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with that is that "aviation" includes a lot more than commercial airliners - it also includes inexpensive, Spartan general aviation aircraft. The cost of such a system would be prohibitive. Just look at the rollout for ADS-B In/Out if you're curious how difficult that might be to implement.

At least one of the planes in this situation was equipped with the system that lands the plane automatically in almost zero visibility. It’s not a stretch of imagination to see how that can extend to the system that tracks planes on approach to the airport and steering on the ground and extrapolates their trajectories at least for the typical braking/abort time forward. These are not general aviation, these are plane…

Sounds like a job for... A.I.?

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#120

Post by cameldrv »

kcg wrote: post #89
michaelmrose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is saying that procedures allow one plane to take off when one is "3 miles out" or 65 seconds out at a very conservative estimate of a reasonable speed. This isn't a lack of attention or coordination. He literally decided that one plane could take off in that space and repeatedly confirmed this decision.

> Who is saying that procedures allow one plane to take off when one is "3 miles out" The FAA says that, specifically the 7110.65 which governs ATC rules and procedures. In a radar environment it allows for departures when the arriving aircraft is 2+ miles from the runway, and there will be at least 3 miles of separation within 1 min of takeoff. A separate rule requires that the departing aircraft is at least 6000ft…

I think that's generally correct, but I'm not familiar with all of the rules. That said, even if the Southwest plane had been faster on the runway, they weren't going to be able to maintain 6000 feet of separation. If Southwest starts rolling from a dead stop, and Fedex is barreling in at 140 knots from two miles, they're necessarily going to converge until Southwest accelerates, which takes a minute.

Juan Brown [1] made an interesting point also. For a Cat II or III approach, and this one was definitely Cat III, there is an ILS critical area that Southwest would have impinged on as it was taking off.

The controller very clearly made a huge mistake.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvUOHa8n7aQ

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