Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport • Hacker News Board

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#141

Post by jcgoette » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:42 AM UTC

hn_user2 wrote: post #43

For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course. The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cr…

WSJ article made it seem as if these lights were already in place:

"Airport officials also inspected lights meant to indicate when it isn’t safe for planes to venture across runways and verified they were working at that particular runway, according to the summary."

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#142

Post by cguess » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:47 AM UTC

exmadscientist wrote: post #139

cguess wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to airplanes 99% is never enough. It's why after every accident (or this near accident) there are months if not years of inquiries and analysis of every second leading up the incident going back days or weeks or even months. It's why flying is the safest way to travel by a huge margin. If even one indecent like this happens hundreds of people die in a horrible all consuming fire, travel for the entire s…

> 99% is never enough 99% is absolutely reasonable for one layer of defense among many ! That is one of the best methods to achieve truly high reliability, as is needed in this case: stack many reliable systems in such a way that they all must fail to get an overall failure. It is not perfect, of course, and things can always cascade, but it is a powerful technique.

I'm guessing you've never worked in system-critical infrastructure? Airplanes are another level up from that. I'm not the one saying this, the FAA and NTSB are. Nothing is allowed to go wrong, ever.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#143

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #117

Dalewyn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing certifications, installation and maintenance inspections and certifications, auditing, etc. To put it into some relatable context, a simple electrical switch that you might grab for a few bucks at your local Home Depot would cost at least several hundreds of dollars because of all the red tape that must be satisfied for safety reasons. Safety isn't cheap.

Red tape isn't the phrase I'd use in this context since your point is that the switch will work 100% of the time even after being thru a literal hurricane, so the difference isn't merely the tape, but that there's been proper testing and engineering all the way down, which drives the cost way up.

Every strip of BS red adhesive has some flimsy pretext to justify it.

Nobody is saying you can't pour theoretically meaningful pork into a traffic light in the form of QA and whatnot and get an indestructible traffic light that operates for a century without being touched in return. People are questioning whether that's actually necessary for a system that's already the Nth layer of redundancy.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#144

Post by areyousure » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

skedaddle wrote: post #78

blackshaw wrote: post #44

What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?

No, mainly they identify the contributing factors and work to correct them. For a specific example check Air Canada 759, which nearly landed on a crowded taxiway at SFO in 2017. No one involved was fired afaik. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQlQFn0euI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759

In case anyone is curious, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 is in fact interesting reading.

Although there were certainly many "systems factors" that contributed to the incident, the followup treatment of the pilots is in fact remarkable. The Wikipedia summary of the incident is "near miss attributed to pilot error". This pilot error nearly killed a thousand people. The pilots failed to report the incident (even flying the return flight the next day) and thus overwrote the cockpit voice recorder for the flight.

And despite all that, the names of the pilots are not included in the NTSB's report and Wikipedia editors/moderators think they shouldn't be included in that article. Impressive job security.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#145

Post by tempestn » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:52 AM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #116

tempestn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem logical if the alternative is not having the lights at all.

> That doesn't seem logical if the alternative is not having the lights at all. If the norm becomes (radio clearance and no red lights), I suspect pilots will become conditioned to equate no-red-lights with landing clearance. Not 100%, but maybe at least 1% of the time. So if that happens and the red lights stopped working, you have a problem that wouldn't have existed if the red lights were never introduced. Perhaps…

That's a good point; if pilots come to expect the lights, I can see how it could be dangerous for them to fail, even if they're not supposed to be the primary mechanism.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#146

Post by nerdponx » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #128

Spooky23 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to preach, harder to practice. When I was an intern I got to help change the blinking red light on top of a 50 story building. It’s a big deal that was scheduled weeks in advance and probably involved two dozen people, a special lightbulb and a bunch of coordination. Even among the team working it plenty of “how many X does it take to change a light bulb” jokes were told. But consider than a pilot depends on cer…

What would be better for safety? One $10000 light bulb, or ten $10 light bulbs?

The former, if the latter fails to satisfy some design constraint.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#147

Post by ipnon » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #104

DELTA1943: "Alright, and uh, woof!" ATC: "Delta 1943, are you able to taxi or do you need a couple of minutes to run checks?" DELTA1943: "Yeah, we can get off the runway" but they're all going to need a change of underwear!! And I thought the Brits were known for understatement!

I believe this kind of situation is known in pilot parlance as a “code brown.”

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#148

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #93

ars wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extra cost for safety is reducing safety because it's causing this not to get installed. Maybe it's worth having a worse system that actually is there.

If this system fails when needed, every cent spent on it will be considered a waste. Nobody is going to say "sure, 300 people died and a couple $150m planes were destroyed.. but we saved a couple million dollars when it was installed 7 years ago".

It would be ideologically convenient for you if people died but statistically it's just gonna be another close call since close calls outnumber accidents in this field by a ton to one.

If/when it happens the professionals who deal in this stuff will say something mundane like "this system prevented ten close calls before we actually had one slip through, that's pretty great". And they'll replace the $5 lightbulb and move the "check the bulbs" from the monthly maintenance checklist to the weekly checklist. And you'll complain much like you're complaining now.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#149

Post by Dalewyn » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #143

fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red tape isn't the phrase I'd use in this context since your point is that the switch will work 100% of the time even after being thru a literal hurricane, so the difference isn't merely the tape, but that there's been proper testing and engineering all the way down, which drives the cost way up.

Every strip of BS red adhesive has some flimsy pretext to justify it. Nobody is saying you can't pour theoretically meaningful pork into a traffic light in the form of QA and whatnot and get an indestructible traffic light that operates for a century without being touched in return. People are questioning whether that's actually necessary for a system that's already the Nth layer of redundancy.

I realize reading this now that "red tape" was not the appropriate way to convey what I'm trying to convey. I'm going to try and figure out how to rephrase that better in the future.

All those inspections, certifications, and other requirements exist for very good reasons. Reasons that more likely than not cost us blood and tears to realize their need.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#150

Post by Dalewyn » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

zmgsabst wrote: post #135

jahewson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreliable systems aren’t there when you need them.

Neither are nonexistent systems.

There is a psychological element to it.

If there's a safety mechanism that may or may not work, coming to rely on it is suicidal.

If there is no safety mechanism in the first place, you (hopefully!) never become complacent in the first place.

So it's better to either have a safety mechanism that will absolutely work every single time or nothing at all, than one that may or may not work and invite complacency.