Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

Post by ars » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 7:22 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".

Post by landemva » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 7:34 AM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #199

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…

The vast majority of road intersections do not have traffic lights. This is because they are expensive. People die every day at intersections without traffic lights. The money to put up the lights just doesn’t exist. A basic 4 way stop is about a quarter million to put in traffic lights. And even at that price you do not get lights with high availability features.

Post by ddalex » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

John23832 wrote: post #162

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #118

I flew into JFK in December and was surprised the number of concurrent operations going on… landing queues of 5+ planes in the sky for the two runways, long takeoff queues, so many land operations… once you touch down it sure feels like the pilot knows they have to get that plane off the runway ASAP. Felt much more busy than I have previously going through LAX/SFO/London/Dubai. I wonder if the level of traffic at JFK…

Newark and LaGuardia are just as packed. The nyc airspace is just over used.

Post by akira2501 » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 7:45 AM UTC

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 ...

Post by deathanatos » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 7:50 AM UTC

mertd wrote: post #152

christophilus wrote: post #48

The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.

I was in a rejected take off. I collected my phone from the cockpit door after it flew there from my hand. Without the seatbelt, I would have flown too. I never found out the reason. I thought they would have to report it and I could read it in av herald.