Why is instrument landing not routinely done? Is it because it is not good enough?
SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
191–200 of 435 posts
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#192The moral of this story for me is: be that "another pilot." To be clear, "another pilot" of another aircraft. Not as clear as it could be just like the title of this article is ambiguous. The moral of this story for me is: call out immediately if you see something off. He's the real hero. Even if the ATC controller immediately saw the plane being misaligned at the same time - that feedback confirming another set of e…
Good observation. If you're wrong, you suffer a brief moment of embarrassment. If you're right, you might prevent a disaster. Speaking up is a no-brainer.
I don't mean to be a downer, but you could certainly cause an accident by calling out an observation which was faulty. I agree with the sentiment that you should speak up when you see something amiss, but let's not kid ourselves that, like every decision, it comes with inherent risk.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#193English is not my native language, but shouldn't the headline have read "SFO near miss would have triggered aviation disaster"? "Might" seems to indicate that something else happened afterwards as a possible result of the near miss
Yes, it's awkward phrasing which implies the near miss led to something else happening.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The jamming resistance is not something we care about (if someone is jamming the signal you just make them turn off their radio)" Evie might know this, too, so I think you should be concerned about jamming. Luckily, AM provides jamming resistance, since Evie would have to bring a powerful transmitter to be loud enough to drown out the other signals. Nevertheless, I think large airports should have fast response team…
Evie? I honestly have no idea who that is. But the more powerful the jamming, the easier it is to find the source. These days even hobbyists play around with cheap off-the-shelf RF analyzers and directional antennas, so I can't imagine that someone jamming airport signals would be able to evade arrest for very long. Heck, the FCC will even track you down if you operate an unlicensed radio station. See: https://www.yo…
Best guess: user Someone is referring to "Eve" as in "Alice, Bob and Eve" in cryptography scenarios. But Mallory would be more appropriate here.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#195How is this even possible? Is it gross negligence on the part of the pilot, a systems problem, or something else? (IANAP)
SFO is said to be a somewhat abnormal/difficult approach [0]. This could cause stress and fractured attention in the pilot. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there was some other complicating factor. Planes don't usually crash (or nearly crash) without several safety factors being breached. 0: https://jethead.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/how-do-you-land-at-...
When the Asiana flight 214 crash landed in SFO in 2013, there was a blog post from a pilot who claimed to be a Lufthansa Air pilot.
He wrote that because of city of San Francisco's unusually stringent noise mitigation rule for airliners flying over the city to land at the SFO airport, an airliner has to make a very steep descent from an altitude higher than normal. So instead of bringing down an airliner gradually, a pilot has to get down to the airport in a hurry, requiring much more stringent management of energy/speed. It sounds simple for a plane that's flying straight in, but for a pilot at end of a 10+ hr flight, it's not always so simple. At least I think that's what the purported Lufthansa pilot claimed.
I wonder if this has any bearing on the incident.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
When flying visually (VFR), taxiway lighting and runway lighting are visually very different. Taxiway lighting is almost always blue, whereas runway lighting is white (with any displaced threshold marked with red lights). In daylight, the markings on the runway are unmistakably different. I'm not instrument rated but my understanding is that with ILS, instrument approaches can handle multiple parallel runways precise…
So many people use 'begs the question' as 'raises the question' now that it's a valid meaning for the phrase. EDIT: To the downvoters: I don't think you understand how human language works.
I upvoted you (fwiw I'm hellbanned)
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not put a big ass array of red lights to indicate where not to land though?
All you need is an universal (ICAO) visual indication for "this is a taxiway, do not fucking landing here". For example, a stripe of alternating red and blue lights.
The runway is where you do want to land.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
(pilot here) Yes, they are very well shown on maps, but it can be hard to map your diagram to what you're seeing, especially if it's raining or if it's at night, and even more if you're tired. I never made the mistake, but can see how somebody in bad conditions would.
Thanks! But why do you even have to map your diagram to what you're seeing? Isn't there a GPS system that shows you exactly where you are on the map and where you are going to go in the next few minutes? It doesn't seem like there should be any mental or visual processing to figure out that you're heading toward the wrong runway, right?
Even setting aside the GPS/tablet/etc. question, I think you'd probably be astonished to learn how simple and how old the technology of automatic/instrument landing is.
Instrument landing systems date to the 1920s, a time when flying at night, or above cloud tops, was incredibly dangerous.
Imagine setting up a couple of directional radio antennas at the end of the runway. One broadcasts short beeps with long pauses (beep-----beep-----beep), the other broadcasts long beeps with short pauses (--beeeep--beeeep--). Set up the antennas so that if you're lined up horizontally with the center of the runway, the signals merge into a continuous tone (beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep).
That's more or less how instrument landing systems still work today. Modern ones have more antennas and coordinate you both vertically (on the correct slope to touch down at the start of the runway) and horizontally, but the whole thing is still based on directional radio signals that you pick up from your plane, and a published set of information for each airport (the "approach plate") telling you what frequencies to listen for depending on the runway you want.
Airliners can be programmed to "autoland" based on this information, but it requires some setup and also requires the pilots to be ready to take over at a moment's notice (if, for example, controllers at the airport decide to have the plane land on a different runway).
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "Where's this guy going" unidentified person on the channel prevented the worst accident in aviation history. Great Job! Give that guy a medal and a movie.
This is like Sully all over again, but with only seconds to extract story from instead of minutes!
"Taxiway", coming to theatres near you soon. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring John Malkovich as The Pilot, Tom Hanks as the "Where’s this guy going?" guy, and Dave Bautista as the taxiway.
Re: SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster
#200In the early 1960s, a pilot mistook a WW2 airfield for Heathrow, and landed his 707 on it, barely stopping before the end of the runway. The runway being too short to lift a 707, mechanics stripped everything out of it they could to reduce the weight - seats, interiors, etc. They put barely enough gas in it to hop over to Heathrow, and managed to get it there safely. The pilot who landed there was cashiered.
Short hops for big planes happen every so often.
A few years back when SFO was closed after the Asiana crash, a lot of big planes got re-routed to Oakland, then once SFO was open again they made the hop across the Bay.