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LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

theguardian.com

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

#181

Post by longislandguido »

metalliqaz wrote: post #9
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…

How do you know it was due to staffing shortages? It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late at night.

Some people here coded the buttons that sometimes don't work when you check in for your flight. That makes them aviation experts. How dare you question wild assumptions.

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

#182

Post by rglover »

wk_end wrote: post #147
rglover wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 control…

"Liability" isn't really how we try to see things in aviation. While it's true that it's ultimately considered the responsibility of the truck/plane to visually confirm that crossing the runway is safe, refuse unsafe commands from ATC, and comply to the best of their ability when ATC says "stop" at the last second, we can't stop our analysis there if we want to prevent this from happening in the future, because unles…

I don't think the ATC is at fault here. If they were put in a difficult situation and responsible for too much at once, I'd view that as a leadership bug, not their personal fault (or anything they should be held liable for). The weak links imo here are the firetruck driver and whoever that ATC reports to directly (i.e., there shouldn't have been an opportunity for this to happen—that's an executive failure, whether they want to take ownership or not).

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

#183

Post by sonar_un »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #7
FL410 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Go look at the atc subreddit, controllers have been begging for help for ages. This isn't one guy's fault.

>This isn't one guy's fault. Counterpoint. It's Regen's fault. He's the guy who decided that a high priority of the government was making sure air traffic controllers had no power to fight back against being horrifically overworked (because unions are evil you see)

Pretty much everything broken in the USA stems directly from Reagen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95fiZCzjlo

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

#184

Post by rglover »

bko wrote: post #151
rglover wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 control…

> this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts What government cuts? 2025 FAA air traffic budget was up around 7% from 2025 https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-faa-...

From the article:

> The crash has raised fears that operations at US airports are under extreme stress. Airports have been dealing with a shortage of air traffic controllers, exacerbated by brutal federal government personnel cuts by Donald Trump’s administration at the start of his second presidency.

Not my opinion, just reading from there.

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

#185

Post by filleduchaos »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #129
lvspiff wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If school busses can look both ways before crossing train tracks you'd think a firetruck would look both ways for airplanes coming down a runway. Don't want to blame the firemen though - this was a series of extrmeemly unfortuante scenarios and people trying to keep the airport running safely. For years people have been on soap boxes saying the FAA/NTSB needs to do better, and yet year after year they are poorly run…

A quick Google gives me that a 737 typically lands between 144 and 180 mph. I think that's quite a lot faster than most people are watching out for. Good news is they are bigger than cars and so easier to spot at a distance but I'm still skeptical that "look before you cross the runway" is sufficiently safe. Keep in mind that the planes may not even be on the ground yet - at the top end in 30s they could go from a 1.…

> I think that's quite a lot faster than most people are watching out for

That isn't even beyond the top speed of a car, which non-trained humans are very well capable of tracking by sight - to talk of airport workers that are specifically trained to look for air traffic. It really is not that hard to tell that an aircraft is on short final if you are actually looking at it.

With four miles of visibility in light rain at night, the aircraft should have been perfectly visible (in a vacuum); what remains to be determined is why the ARFF crew did not see it. The answer to that could range from "they didn't look at all" to "the orientation of the runway relative to the surrounding neighbourhoods meant that the CRJ's lights got lost in the city lights".

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

#186

Post by tialaramex »

awakeasleep wrote: post #174
wk_end wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NTSB - and aviation in general - as much as possible tries to avoid "pinning" issues on individuals. The purpose of an investigation isn't to ascribe blame, it's to try to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, and prescribing "don't make mistakes" is not a realistic or useful method for preventing accidents from recurring.

Understand what happened and prevent it from happening again, so long as this can be done without expanding staffing, reducing OT, structural change, etc

No. Safety investigation agencies deliberately aren't regulators. The NTSB may decide that their recommendation is that every air passenger should be carrying a melon, and that results in a press release, a letter to the FAA saying that's what they recommend, that's all.

Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation isn't their role. That's why you will so often see a safety investigatory body repeatedly recommend the same thing. The UK's RAIB (which is for Rail investigations) for example will often call out why a fatal accident they've investigated wouldn't have happened if the regulator had implemented some prior recommendation, either one they're slow walking or have rejected.

The investigators don't need to care about other factors. Are melons too expensive? Not their problem. Only unfriendly countries grow melons? Not their problem. They only need to care about recommending things that would prevent future harm which is their purpose.

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

#187

Post by rectang »

tialaramex wrote: post #186
awakeasleep wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understand what happened and prevent it from happening again, so long as this can be done without expanding staffing, reducing OT, structural change, etc

No. Safety investigation agencies deliberately aren't regulators. The NTSB may decide that their recommendation is that every air passenger should be carrying a melon, and that results in a press release, a letter to the FAA saying that's what they recommend, that's all. Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation isn't their role. That's why you will so often see a safety investigatory body repeatedly r…

> Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation isn't their role.

And if it was the role of investigators to change policy, then there would be enormous pressure from industry to reach convenient conclusions, poisoning the investigation process.

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

#188

Post by sophacles »

bko wrote: post #151
rglover wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 control…

> this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts What government cuts? 2025 FAA air traffic budget was up around 7% from 2025 https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-faa-...

Notably 2025 was also the year that Elon started firing people and shutting down things that were in the budget, as well as several shutdowns.

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

#189

Post by rdtsc »

rglover wrote: post #117
inaros wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 control…

Truck was on a different frequency from the aircraft so they couldn’t even hear each others’ clearances.

Also first time ATC told the truck to stop it wasn’t too clear who the message was addressed to. It’s a bit hard to hear “Truck1” there, not clear who he wants to stop. The second time, one can argue by the time “stop” command was heard it might have been better to gun the engine. As the truck sort of slowed down in the middle of the runway.

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

#190

Post by jamincan »

0xffff2 wrote: post #162
jliptzin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to automate the job of an ATC controller? At least partially? Or at least just as a sanity check on every human decision? Not saying I want human ATC controllers replaced, but if there’s a severe staff shortage, I feel like a computerized version is better than nothing at all.

In this specific incident, there was a system in place called Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does serve as an automated sanity check on controllers commands. The surveillance video that is circulating shows that the system was working and indicated that the runway was not safe to enter. It's not clear yet why the truck entered the runway anyway. 0: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl

I wonder if they thought that since they were responding to an emergency, and they were given clearance to cross by ATC, that that would override normal procedures. Kind of like how emergency vehicles cross a red light all the time when responding to an emergency.
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