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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

#201

Post by Aeolun »

hef19898 wrote: post #131
EdwardDiego wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I figure an airport servicing a metropolitan area with nearly 2 million people would be using all the best practice risk minimization approaches. What scares me about this is that I have no idea how common or uncommon this is, and what other airports are in a similar situation.

If you are not involved directly with any of that professionally, it is better to treat it the way non-developer treat the OS. Assume it will work as intended because loads of highly trained professionals take care of it. Added benefit ehen it comes to aviation: strict and sensible regulation (the MAX disaster notwithstanding).

Wut? Because I’m aware of how the software world works I’m worried about literally every other professional endeavour. If it works it’s because it’s been refined over many years, or because of duct tape and spit.

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

#202

Post by zaarn »

taeric wrote: post #183
zaarn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If for a given set of inputs there is a deterministic output, then the overall behaviour to a series of inputs is just as deterministic and predictable. I'm not sure what you mean with "is not predictable" when you also admit that it's repeatable.

I think the point is that reality is essentially a chaotic system. That is, yes, you can repeat a failure from an input once you've seen it, but the search space is too big to enumerate beforehand.

That entirely depends on what exactly you implement here, it's entirely possible to implement an AI with continuous & linear properties, meaning that you can extrapolate it's behaviour between a set of inputs with decent accuracy and it won't suddenly change it's behaviour between continuous & linear inputs.

But AI isn't different than existing software systems either. Both will take an input from reality and take actions upon it.

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

#203

Post by mulmen »

quest88 wrote: post #50
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.

Are there aircraft with cat3 approaches that aren’t commercial? I don’t know any any GA that do that.

Looks like the Piper M600, Daher TBM 940, and Cirrus Vision all have auto-land capabilities through the Garmin G3000 system. But it doesn’t seem to be as sophisticated as what is described for the airliners. It’s more of an emergency system.

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

#204

Post by krisoft »

King-Aaron wrote: post #143
krisoft wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mining, and what kind of inane line of questioning is that.

> what kind of inane line of questioning is that

A very pertinent one. The comment you responded to talked about how aviation achieves their stellar safety record. You told us that in your other industry (now we know it is mining) things are done differently. So it is fair to ask: How is that going for you? What are the results? Are you safer or less safe than aviation?

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

#205

Post by bobthepanda »

bilekas wrote: post #144
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how many people know this, but one of the first instances of "union busting" ever committed by the US federal govt was against air traffic controllers. The job used to be extremely competitive and prestigious, but overall lower wages and security has made it way harder to attract as many highly talented individuals. And with how many rules there are in that pdf, it's shocking we don't see multiple accide…

I don't knock unions but I will add : > The median annual wage for air traffic controllers was $129,750 in May 2021 SOME unions do take advantage, given the traffic controllers' 'single point of failure' it can be very attractive for some unions who are greedy. Again I reiterate, unions are not a bad idea, just not all of them are solely in the interests of the actual employees.

IIRC that figure is partially due to understaffing leading to long hours and six day workweeks, and it’s not exactly ideal for us to have overworked ATC

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

#206

Post by jeffrallen »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #142
zackbloom wrote: post #123

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 c…

I'm not sure how many people know this, but one of the first instances of "union busting" ever committed by the US federal govt was against air traffic controllers. The job used to be extremely competitive and prestigious, but overall lower wages and security has made it way harder to attract as many highly talented individuals. And with how many rules there are in that pdf, it's shocking we don't see multiple accide…

See also the 1999 documentary, Pushing Tin, for an exploration of the highly talented individuals employed by the FAA. /s

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

#207

Post by reisse »

harshreality wrote: post #194
seanhunter wrote: post #74

Man the FedEx crew who gave the "Southwest Abort" call on the radio earned their wings that day. Just amazing presence of mind to do exactly the right thing in the moment.

It was a good thing to try, but the Southwest plane was above V1 (edit: may not have been, but acted as if they were) and couldn't abort, and didn't. Both planes climbed away from the runway with minimal clearance between them. It was simply luck that they didn't crash anyway. The fast reaction by the Fedex pilots may have contributed to increased distance between the planes that saved them, but their callout to the…

> Southwest plane was above V0 and couldn't abort

It's up to investigators to find out. Pilots definitely can (and have the right to) abort after V1, if they consider it safer than taking off. Before V1, you can be sure that abort is safe, after V1, you have to weigh risks of high-speed abort against risks of continuing flying, but staying on the ground is still possible.

Yes, and nitpicking - decision speed is V1, not V0.

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

#208

Post by krisoft »

michaelmrose wrote: post #47
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.

That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. In the linked communication you can see that he knew both planes were incoming on the same runway and confirmed his brain dead plan repeatedly to both crews. Even telling SW that the…

> That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity.

Let's assume that you are right. I don't think I can be as confident about anything as you are. Especially not before an investigation, but let's pretend that you are right: the controller in question is an imbecile who need to be fired immediately.

How is that not a process problem? How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? And if he is an idiot, which I don't believe but we are in a hypothetical, how many others there are?

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

#209

Post by helsinkiandrew »

mulmen wrote: post #187
jnsaff2 wrote: post #165

I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time. When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway. So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land". Which a…

Europe uses pessimistic runway locks but the US prefers optimistic locks. This improves throughput at US airports with the risk of a rollback on a dirty runway.

I'm not sure why this is a problem with airports with two runways (doesn't Austin have two?).

I've been in a helicopter hovering over Heathrow airport where you can see the lights from the line of planes coming in to land every 45 seconds that looks like it goes off to infinity. Whatever technique they use there seems to work.

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

#210

Post by hef19898 »

Aeolun wrote: post #201
hef19898 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not involved directly with any of that professionally, it is better to treat it the way non-developer treat the OS. Assume it will work as intended because loads of highly trained professionals take care of it. Added benefit ehen it comes to aviation: strict and sensible regulation (the MAX disaster notwithstanding).

Wut? Because I’m aware of how the software world works I’m worried about literally every other professional endeavour. If it works it’s because it’s been refined over many years, or because of duct tape and spit.

Best case: well refined duct tape and spit. Even better with added swiss army knifes.
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