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Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

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

#281

Post by refurb »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #261
refurb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newark is super congested too. I remember flying from Michigan to Newark once and the ticket said “2 hours 45min” and I thought that was nuts, it’s like an hour flight. Turns out they tack on an hour leaving and coming for taxing and waiting in line. At least that’s how it was a decade ago.

At least they have the space to try to improve it, new terminal actually looks world class https://thepointsguy.com/news/newark-airport-terminal-a/

That’ll be a nice upgrade. Newark and La Guardia look so old. Same with Terminal 1 in Boston.

The Detroit airport looks amazing next to them.

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

#282

Post by heavenlyblue »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #177
jcgoette wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ article made it seem as if these lights were already in place: "Airport officials also inspected lights meant to indicate when it isn’t safe for planes to venture across runways and verified they were working at that particular runway, according to the summary."

So, the American flight didn't follow directions or the lights. If that turns out to be the case, wow.

I think what the parent want to say is that these lights do not exist. The sentence is written in a way that makes it seem they do (i.e. it's all theoretical in nature).

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

#283

Post by hugh-avherald »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #196
kube-system wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die at intersections with stop signs every day, but we don’t do it on our roads for the exact same reason.

McKinsey style interview question. How many road intersections are there in the US?

My instinct would be to compare a representative neighbourhood's population to the number of intersections and extrapolate.

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

#284

Post by matsimitsu »

pedalpete wrote: post #6

Are we're relying on pilots who are holding many many things in their heads to follow only the verbal directions of air traffic control? Two alternatives that I would think would be fairly easy to implement. 1) Google maps style directions input by air traffic control showing as well as telling the pilot what runway/path to runway to take. 2) Coloured lighting directing the pilot to the right runway via the correct p…

#2 is already a thing in Europe, (for example on Heathrow you can hear ATC say "follow the greens", which will guide the planes to the correct Runway entrance: https://youtu.be/7pX9hxn-cmE?t=363)

Or this one, showing how it works in foggy condition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W2ak94xTXM

And an explanation of the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAn1mfBDDkc

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

#285

Post by tompccs »

It's surprising that ATC works in such a human-driven manual way. Compare to train signalling, where tracks are divided into signalled sections, and a train cannot enter the next section until the section ahead is clear, with automated braking if a red signal is run. This system was developed over many tragic accidents. Even the Victorians came up with ways to minimise human error (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_(railway_signalling) )

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

#286

Post by KptMarchewa »

tompccs wrote: post #285

It's surprising that ATC works in such a human-driven manual way. Compare to train signalling, where tracks are divided into signalled sections, and a train cannot enter the next section until the section ahead is clear, with automated braking if a red signal is run. This system was developed over many tragic accidents. Even the Victorians came up with ways to minimise human error (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

One reason is air corridors aren't so well defined as railways.

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

#287

Post by hugh-avherald »

mkl95 wrote: post #215

Layman question here, why can't airplane collisions be predicted automatically? Something like an axis aligned bounding box around each airplane and some basic velocity equations. You don't want airplanes to be too close so an approximation should suffice.

By the time you've predicted a collision it's too late to react.

There's no advantage having a predictive tool over a binary "runway clear/not clear"

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

#288

Post by hugh-avherald »

blackshaw wrote: post #44

What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?

They have to call the controller and explain what went wrong. They'll then have to chat to their chief pilot over tea and biscuits minus the tea and biscuits. If they're honest, I doubt anything will come of it, even if they were violating some other regulation.

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

#289

Post by crote »

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.

Some major airports already have Follow the Greens.

Traditionally every taxiway and every possible path on each intersection will be painted with a yellow line and illuminated with yellow lights.

Follow the Greens replaces that with green lights which are controllable at a very high resolution. The result is that every plane will have a path of green lights to follow, greatly reducing everyone's workload.

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