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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

#121

Post by euroderf »

hef19898 wrote: post #103
lmm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow commercial aviation, with its strong unions, ends up safer than virtually any other field of human endeavour.

More or less the only real Six Sigma safe industry humanity managed to create. And still, every incident turns everyone into safety and procedurural experts, even before the official incident reports are done. As much as this frustrates me, it has always been like that, and always will be like that.

Any back-of-the-envelope safety comparisons between the airline industry and manned spaceflight (to include STS) ?

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

#122

Post by JuniorBalleg »

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

[flagged]

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

#123

Post by zackbloom »

Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time.

In this case, the controller failed to tell the departing flight to hurry (the references to 'no delay' or 'immediate' in the blog post), AND frankly timed things pretty close given the weather. Without the ability to actually see the approaching plane, or perhaps even the plane on the ground, it will probably be found that timing a departure that close at all was reckless. That said, I feel for these tower controllers, it's not common for many planes to get stacked up waiting to depart, and it is their job to get them out. What may have worked just fine on a clear-weather day simply became too dangerous on that day.

The official manual for air traffic controllers in the US is the FAA Order JO 7110.65W [1], if anyone cares to review it.

1 - https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/order/atc.pdf

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

#124

Post by cameldrv »

vezuchyy wrote: post #81
rflrob wrote: post #69

Seeing other comments fault the Southwest pilot for not starting faster, but it’s not obvious to me that there was any significant delay—a few seconds at most between lining up and starting the roll down the runway. The diagram isn’t to scale, so it’s hard to tell. I wonder how much faster an expedited departure could have been.

They have their checklists and everything, it's not an unusual case when the plane goes to a runway and stops for a few seconds. Again, as an ATC, if you need a passenger plane to get out as fast as possible - be clear about it or don't clear them to the runway. It was also a Fedex pilot who figured what's about to happen by themselves.

Yes. The controller should have said "no delay" along with the takeoff clearance, but also given the extremely poor visibility (they couldn't even see 1/4 of the way down the runway), it shouldn't be surprising when a plane takes a few seconds longer on the runway to get situated and double check a few things.

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

#125

Post by hef19898 »

smiley1437 wrote: post #22
xpe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without keying the mic I’m not following

'keying the mic' is turning on the microphone It's very likely they said some less polite words like 'WTF ARE THEY DOING' before turning on the mic and acting all professional

I am fairly certain that those choice words where exchanged at the water cooler at a FedEx brake room way after the incident. And even then I'd suspect the attention to be more on the "dear god, we have all been lucky to still breathe today* instead of cursing at some other people. That kind of behavior is what you get from real professionals.

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

#126

Post by friendzis »

euroderf wrote: post #119
mynegation wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.?

No, no and no. Safety critical systems must be validated to be safe in the operational domain and for that they must be deterministic. AI is anything but that.

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

#127

Post by cameldrv »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #63
King-Aaron wrote: post #3

Wow, reading that audio transmission log was pretty intense. Someone's losing their job for sure

I wouldn't say that's a given. For example, a similar incident occurred at Rhode Island in 1999, and the air traffic controller responsible was not fired -- merely sent for retraining before being returned to service. Like this incident, it was another flight crew that prevented the situation from becoming worse, by rejecting their takeoff clearance -- something the pilot-in-command of this Southwest flight should ha…

Supposedly that controller was actually later promoted to managing the tower of a major hub airport.

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

#128

Post by hef19898 »

euroderf wrote: post #121
hef19898 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less the only real Six Sigma safe industry humanity managed to create. And still, every incident turns everyone into safety and procedurural experts, even before the official incident reports are done. As much as this frustrates me, it has always been like that, and always will be like that.

Any back-of-the-envelope safety comparisons between the airline industry and manned spaceflight (to include STS) ?

What would that be good for, did a shuttle accident take down an airliner and I am not aware of that?

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

#129

Post by krisoft »

King-Aaron wrote: post #61
valine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the goal is to improve safety firing people is almost always the wrong response. That juvenile preoccupation with punishment only serves to create a culture where mistakes are hidden rather than understood.

When we have major line-of-fire incidents on our sites that can very possibly result in loss of life, generally you do get the boot. And it is certainly not 'hidden', you get black listed and company-wide communications are sent as a result. People certainly do learn from these kinds of mistakes, but usually the person at the centre of it goes for a walk.

What industry would that be and how is your safety record?

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

#130

Post by Vespasian »

pfortuny wrote: post #118

Unbelievable behavior “You have our apologies” (by this time I would have had a heart attack being the controller), “Thank you” (not a single bad word or insinuation from the pilot). What people!

1. They are trained very well to handle stressful situations calmly.

2. Knowing an incident just happened, they are probably aware of the fact that each of their words is being recorded and will be examined during the investigation. Like "don't talk to the police if you are arrested" it's wise to say as little as possible (after the danger has passed)

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