Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

viewfromthewing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 372 posts

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

#231

Post by julian_sark »

curun1r wrote: post #221
sonofhans wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the other answers are getting at the meat of it. Consider that those red lights functioning is the only thing keeping hundreds or thousands of people from getting killed. What sorts of safety and durability requirements would you impose on them? What sorts of maintenance and training requirements? If nothing else they need to hold up in every weather and temperature big airports exist (-80ºF to +150ºF)…

The other major concern is running reliable power to the lights. That isn’t something that can happen above ground when crossing runways, so there’s going to be at least some digging up the runway and repaving. Repaving runways isn’t cheap. It has to be done in an expedited manner since airports need all runways available during peak hours, so there’s usually a six-ish hour overnight window for work to get done and t…

Why can't they have two huge, red, flashing lights at either side of the crossway, thus avoiding the costs to dig up runway asphalt altogether? Better than what they seemingly have now ...

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

#232

Post by jrockway »

edgyquant wrote: post #73
perihelions wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily *six* orders of magnitude. STS saw two crashes in O(10^2) flights (and SpaceX has much smaller numbers still). The US handles O(10^7) commercial flights per year, none of which crashed in 10+ years (I think). https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers

Ridiculous. This is comparing the modern commercial private space flight industry with the still maturing mostly public industry. Compare how dangerous the first twenty years of air flight was. We haven’t achieved the same level of commercial space flight due to just how cautious we’ve been.

Aviation statistics get pretty scary as you go down the regulatory hierarchy. Charter operations (part 135) have a worse safety record than big airlines (part 121). General Aviation pales in comparison to both. (And yup, some careless private pilots turn their C172 into an unlicensed charter airline.)

Good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpGl2_fVr2Y

Right now, private spaceflight is basically regulated in a manner similar to Part 91 (GA) operations. The customer signs a waiver saying that the vehicle is not certified and that they've checked it out to ensure it's safe. Early days, of course.

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

#233

Post by curun1r »

julian_sark wrote: post #231
curun1r wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other major concern is running reliable power to the lights. That isn’t something that can happen above ground when crossing runways, so there’s going to be at least some digging up the runway and repaving. Repaving runways isn’t cheap. It has to be done in an expedited manner since airports need all runways available during peak hours, so there’s usually a six-ish hour overnight window for work to get done and t…

Why can't they have two huge, red, flashing lights at either side of the crossway, thus avoiding the costs to dig up runway asphalt altogether? Better than what they seemingly have now ...

There may be designs that cut out some/most of the cost, but I made the comment because I watched a YouTube documentary on an airport that was making modifications and they had to dig up a bunch of the runways. They made a big deal out of the work, including working with a special contractor who had a practice area where they tried all the work they'd have to do ahead of time and timed themselves to be sure they could get the runway back in operating condition by the time it was needed. The amount of work they went through for something fairly minor was pretty memorable. I took from it that airports have a lot of logistical concerns that are pretty unique and the "that seems simple" take that I'd previously had about the tarmac portion of an airport being just a bunch of asphalt with some signs and lights on it was totally ignorant of all the complexity.

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

#234

Post by mopsi »

jamiek88 wrote: post #103
ajross wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's... a street light.[1] When street lights become "very expensive of course" it's time to revisit our priors about how we regulate. And I say this as someone not normally inclined to libertarian rhetoric. [1] To be cle…

It’s not a street light. You aren’t going to have poles or hanging lights on a runway. It is embedded lights. That have to work without fail in extreme temps, all weathers, with planes rolling over them all day. They have to have certain visibility at different angles, they have to fail gracefully. These things are rarely ‘that’s just…’

You make it sound much more difficult problem than it actually is. Embedded lights are nothing new, every small to medium airport has hundreds of them, larger airports thousands - marking runway and taxiway centerlines. Technical characteristics, installation requirements etc have been standardized a long time ago by the International Civil Aviation Organization and it's paint-by-the-numbers now. Such lights are literally off-the-shelf products and every airport maintenance team already knows how to install and take care of them.

Honeywell et al all have huge catalogues with all kinds of aerodrome lights. Here's Hughey & Phillips: https://www.hugheyandphillips.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06...

As you can see, embedded lights are also represented from pg 23 onwards and red "stop bar" lights can be found on pg 38. Here's a picture of them installed: https://i.imgur.com/ThNIQaw.jpg

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

#235

Post by murderfs »

jMyles wrote: post #126

I want to offer a bit of a different perspective than the one I'm seeing in other comments which (totally reasonably) wonder if a) JFK is too busy or needs some safety upgrades and b) whether voice contact with ATC is the best way to reduce risk during unusual events like incursions. I'm just an amateur enthusiast who listens to a lot of ATC, so take this assessment with that grain of salt: JFK has long had a unique…

> The controller did a few things that are unusual in ATC, but not totally unheard of at JFK in particular:

> * Completely changed tone of voice. He yelled into the mic. That doesn't happen often in ATC.

> * Yelled "SHIT!" to open his transmission.

> * Spoke in a way that emphasized speed and urgency even if it cost a little clarity (eg, some news outlets have transcribed "cancel takeoff clearance" as "cancel takeoff plans" because of how intense and fast the controller is yelling)

I think this was actually relatively subdued. There was a similar incident at Chicago Midway in 2015 where the ATC command was "Delta 1328 STOP STOP STOP": https://youtu.be/b26NcJCLZl4?t=82

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

#236

Post by quickthrower2 »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #39
dado3212 wrote: post #2

Is there any aggregation of near misses? How often do things like this happen?

A near miss is a collision. This was a near collision ;)

A near miss as opposed to a far miss, the type that happens when a plane in China misses one in the US

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

#237

Post by [deleted] »

areyousure wrote: post #144
skedaddle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#238

Post by dotancohen »

giantg2 wrote: post #127
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…

These sound more like detecting something. How about preventing miscommunication? They weren't even on the correct runway.

One solution does not discount the other. In data security we talk about security in depth, security in layers, etc. The current proposal is _a_ solution, but not _the only_ solution nor even the only component of a comprehensive solution.

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

#239

Post by mopsi »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #163
ajross wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Runway lighting is 80 year old technology; we solved all those problems long, long ago. I mean, come on. It's one thing to point out that problems are inherently complicated, but to pretend that we can't deploy something as obvious as, yes, a street light because of expense is making yourself part of the problem, not the solution.

> lighting is 80 year old technology The first gas turbine was invented in 1791 Are they cheap? Can you buy them for next day delivery?

> Are they cheap? Can you buy them for next day delivery?

Yes. They are consumables comparable to bulbs and light fixtures at home, just good LEDs on a PCB in a metal/plastic case. It's sheer insanity to pretent that aerodrome lights are some magic technology.

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

#240

Post by hn_user2 »

harshreality wrote: post #94
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…

Beyond detecting runway incursions, couldn't ASDE be integrated with some kind of RTS-like interface for ATC so they could indicate where planes should go next? Automated alerts could be broadcast to ATC and to the pilots if planes deviated from the plan, and the system could flag actions that risked costly but non-fatal ground collisions and other problems unrelated to takeoffs or landings.

Further, Electronic clearance delivery already sends instructions to the airplane electronically for their in-flight clearance. An electronic delivery of their ground clearance could be hooked up to navigation to highlight that route on the ground as well.
Post reply on HN