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LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

theguardian.com

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Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#281

Post by defrost »

longislandguido wrote: post #279
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From VAS Aviation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbm-QJAAzNY , or possibly in the comments, it was noted that there were 2 people on - one in the tower, one elsewhere in charge of approach. So perhaps, it's innacurate because he was working "with" the person on approach, but still accurate to what we would all call "working alone"?

Exactly how many people do the self-appointed experts of HackerNews feel should be working ATC at an airport with only two intersecting runways? 10? 30? One per aircraft? How do you suppose all these people coordinate their activities?

Many airports have intersecting runways to account for changing wind directions.

Are you talking about a two strip airfield on a cattle station in the Northern Territory with once a month traffic, or something else?

Your "gotcha" class question isn't especially well formed.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#282

Post by longislandguido »

defrost wrote: post #281
longislandguido wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly how many people do the self-appointed experts of HackerNews feel should be working ATC at an airport with only two intersecting runways? 10? 30? One per aircraft? How do you suppose all these people coordinate their activities?

Many airports have intersecting runways to account for changing wind directions. Are you talking about a two strip airfield on a cattle station in the Northern Territory with once a month traffic, or something else? Your "gotcha" class question isn't especially well formed.

Everyone is stomping their feet saying the answer should be more than the number which has not yet been disclosed, so we don't know, but yet everyone also refuses to provide a definite number.

So tell me, for an airport that only has two runways which intersect, at LGA's volume, what is the correct number of controllers that should be working that field?

This also assumes the FAA hasn't already done this math and the gaming-chair experts know more than the FAA (which they don't).

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#283

Post by defrost »

longislandguido wrote: post #282
defrost wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many airports have intersecting runways to account for changing wind directions. Are you talking about a two strip airfield on a cattle station in the Northern Territory with once a month traffic, or something else? Your "gotcha" class question isn't especially well formed.

Everyone is stomping their feet saying the answer should be more than the number which has not yet been disclosed, so we don't know, but yet everyone also refuses to provide a definite number. So tell me, for an airport that only has two runways which intersect, at LGA's volume, what is the correct number of controllers that should be working that field? This also assumes the FAA hasn't already done this math and the…

In my direct 20 year experience working millions of line kilometres of air survey, zero or one controllers works out just fine.

Again, you haven't sufficiently qualified your questions - it's not about the number of runways.

EDIT: I see you updated your response and added in a nod to traffic volume - that's a good start.

Other factors in this non linear multi factor equation are ... ?

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#284

Post by wahnfrieden »

coryrc wrote: post #236
achierius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should also be their incentive You can't just proclaim what incentives should be. We do have a mechanism for changing the incentives of management though: it's called unions.

If it was a traveler's union, maybe. Cop unions don't result in better outcomes for the general public, and there's no reason a controller's union won't end up just boosting pay and having a rubber room for hacks (referencing NYC schools paying teachers to not work because they're either predators or terrible at teaching, but being unable to fire them).

A traveler's union? So there is no solution you see?

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#285

Post by dghlsakjg »

hatthew wrote: post #244
dghlsakjg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were all, including truck 1, queued up at the stop line waiting for clearance to cross. Truck 1 received clearance to cross, he began crossing, then received instructions to stop after it was too late. The rest of the emergency vehicles were stopped because they hadn’t been authorized. Truck 1 started moving because he had received specific instructions to do exactly what he was doing. I take it you’re not a pil…

"Truck 1 and company" were cleared to cross. A few seconds later, "truck 1" was instructed to stop. Edit: Confirmed truck 1 was the one involved in the collision. Previous text: It is unclear which truck specifically was involved in the crash. In photos, the truck has the number 35 on it, not sure if that would preclude it from being identified as "truck 1" verbally.

Ah. I missed hearing that “and company” in the recording.

In any case, if they were cleared across the runway, and they were, it isn’t really on them. It doesn’t change the gist of the argument. The broader point is that it wasn’t that one truck was barreling around being reckless as implied by gp, it’s just that one truck made it out and the rest of the company had yet to start moving (whether because they saw the plane coming from their viewpoint farther back, or just hadn’t started moving yet, we will find out later). The entire company had stopped at the line, and when cleared across the lead truck was struck. Of course the rest were still stopped behind the line, there was a giant fire truck in their path moments before.

The instruction to stop is, to my pilots ear, irrelevant. Until an instruction is read back by the receiving party, it is worthless. It might not have been received, or received incorrectly. That’s the whole point of the readback, to ensure that the instruction was received correctly (notice how I missed the “and company”… a readback would have caught that). If there is not a readback, controllers are instructed to ask for one. On top of that, it was a panic instruction using non standard verbiage. If he was already past the line, the instruction to stop might have made it worse.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#286

Post by downrightmike »

rationalist wrote: post #266
MisterTea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not minimizing, it's galvanizing. 100% A wake up call. I don't fly much but I was bothered by the earlier ATC stories and now I don't feel safe at all.

Flying is still safer than driving.

Much less so for the last 14 months

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#287

Post by tavavex »

haberman wrote: post #273
amiga386 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There are a whole bucketload of problems, each one contributing to the staff shortage. The US has problems that other countries don't have (or have less of). It's a long-term organisational issue. None of it is insurmountable, but things need to be done differently, and the politics of that may be insurmountable. Being an air-traffic controller anywhere in the world is a very intense job at times, and needs a…

> Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder" colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net outcome was fewer applicants It was much worse than that. Students who had already spent years studying to be air traffic controllers through the CTI program were subject to a sudden policy change that disqualified them from entering the profession unless they passed a “biographical questionnaire.” 85% of c…

This test is completely insane. What were the people making it thinking? It feels like half of the scored questions have point values assigned at random. Why does being unemployed for 1-2 months before enrolling in the program award you 10 points, 5-6 months is 8 points, yet 3-4 is a fat zero? There's so many questions with these random score assignments. Why does having real qualifications related to your job only give you a point or two, but some random factoid like taking unrelated courses or doing poorly in college history give upwards of 15 points? Why is child labor rewarded, with more points given the earlier you started?

Unless I'm missing something, this couldn't have been designed by a human being with normal goals in mind. This feels like a test that was created to act as a locked door that you could only pass by knowing the exact password, the sequence of lies you had to produce. That anyone's career was at the mercy of THIS is deranged. What the hell is going on in the US?

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#288

Post by tavavex »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #146
rekrsiv wrote: post #109

I am alarmed at the high number of supposed engineers on this thread that are seemingly unaware of how safety-critical systems work. Literally every other piece of this system has redundancy built into it. Robustness is never optional in a scenario involving human safety. When did this lunacy become an arguable position?

I'm not in aerospce field, but surprised how low-tech and critical to human error takeoff/landing/taxi process is. We have TCAS/ACAS in air, but no similar automatic safety guards near/on the field?

TCAS is much simpler than your proposal. Ensuring that traffic can't get too close to you in midair is a different problem from analyzing complex, non-linear movements at tightly-packed airports. How do you implement this system while avoiding false positives?

Imagine that you're landing at one of two parallel runways. There's a plane lining up on the other runway. You can't have proximity warnings like TCAS, because this is a safe situation even though you get close to the other plane. What if that plane is taxiing towards your runway? You can't predict its movements until it starts entering the runway because it may just stop at the hold short line, as it should. Extrapolate this simple scenario to anything that could ever happen at airports with a large variety of actors, and you'll start to see why everyone in the world is still relying on humans to do this.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#289

Post by doubleg72 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #285
hatthew wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Truck 1 and company" were cleared to cross. A few seconds later, "truck 1" was instructed to stop. Edit: Confirmed truck 1 was the one involved in the collision. Previous text: It is unclear which truck specifically was involved in the crash. In photos, the truck has the number 35 on it, not sure if that would preclude it from being identified as "truck 1" verbally.

Ah. I missed hearing that “and company” in the recording. In any case, if they were cleared across the runway, and they were, it isn’t really on them. It doesn’t change the gist of the argument. The broader point is that it wasn’t that one truck was barreling around being reckless as implied by gp, it’s just that one truck made it out and the rest of the company had yet to start moving (whether because they saw the p…

“I take it you haven’t ever worked with radio.. “. Seems like you haven’t a clue how any of this works. Doesn’t matter if they had radio clearance, the fire truck is responsible for ensuring runways is clear and not driving in front of plane.

Re: LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

#290

Post by denkmoon »

coryrc wrote: post #236
achierius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should also be their incentive You can't just proclaim what incentives should be. We do have a mechanism for changing the incentives of management though: it's called unions.

If it was a traveler's union, maybe. Cop unions don't result in better outcomes for the general public, and there's no reason a controller's union won't end up just boosting pay and having a rubber room for hacks (referencing NYC schools paying teachers to not work because they're either predators or terrible at teaching, but being unable to fire them).

Try looking outside the US to see how unions work without being crushed by 100 years of anti union legislation. Also police unions are a joke.
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