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

291–300 of 372 posts

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

#291

Post by sandos »

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.

Could also be that they were not correctly set, the pilots thinking "hey, no red lights, we can go! Its 100% safe".

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

#292

Post by havblue »

MandieD wrote: post #272
paganel wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my goodness there’s so many ways to be badly hurt without a big crash. I remember an incident involving a private jet about a decade ago. The jet was at cruising altitude when suddenly it hit an air pocket and precipitously lost altitude. This being a private jet the occupants (some Greek businessmen) were drinking champagne or whatever, fact is they weren't wearing their seatbelts. A few of them died right on…

This is the top (but not only) reason keeping your baby/toddler in your lap instead of in their own seat, buckled into a carseat, is a terrible way to fly. Lap infants are far more likely to be injured in-flight than other children: https://journals.lww.com/pec-online/fulltext/2019/10000/in_f... The carriers don't make this easy: they have conflicting rules on carseats for in-cabin use, especially if you're flying be…

I'll note, however, that carrying multiple child seats onto an aircraft is simultaneously exhausting and humiliating.

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

#293

Post by thaumasiotes »

akira2501 wrote: post #247
julian_sark wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

> flashing lights at either side of the crossway 787 wingspan is 200ft (60m). Planes don't turn on a dime either, but the larger ones do have steering linked to the rear wheels, so their turn radius can be surprising. The non invasive solution would be to require some kind of ground control computer link that can directly draw their controlled path for them on their displays and give them a nice loud master caution o…

> 787 wingspan is 200ft

The lights don't need to be tall enough that the wings would be able to hit them.

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

#294

Post by sethammons »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #205
azalemeth wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Punishing people for making human mistakes causes them to hide them, feel ashamed, and not highlight issues that may affect others. Aviation has fostered (very specifically) an open culture of inquisition to errors: it's assumed that if one qualified pilot made a mistake, any qualified pilot could make the same mistake under the same circumstances. If anything, you're actively encouraged to report things that…

Interesting that programming went in the same direction. Blameless post-mortems etc.

This move was championed in the industry by John Allspaw, then CTO of Etsy, around 2010. I am under the impression that he introduced the idea of blameless post mortems but I could be misremembering.

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

#295

Post by DonHopkins »

taspeotis wrote: post #168
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…

> but apparently NOT at the intersection inquisition https://www.google.com/search?q=%22in+question%22

Nothing is working. Send in the nuns!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnF1OtP2Svk

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

#296

Post by crote »

astrange wrote: post #185
cguess wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you've never worked in system-critical infrastructure? Airplanes are another level up from that. I'm not the one saying this, the FAA and NTSB are. Nothing is allowed to go wrong, ever.

I've been stuck at SFO for hours at least once a year because our flight had some mechanical issue. (Always on a Delta flight to ATL or MSP, don't know why.) They did fix it and then eventually we took off. In a way that's "not going wrong". On the other hand, they didn't cancel it and send the plane to be disassembled for failure analysis. That'd certainly be safer.

A single mechanical issue isn't an incident.

Everything involved in aviation is designed to be extremely reliable, but parts are still expected to break. Airplanes have a list of parts which are allowed to be broken without grounding the airplane. Every part has a well-documented procedure for inspection, maintenance, and replacement.

Investigations happen when, despite following the documented procedures, stuff somehow still goes wrong. They are done to improve the procedures so that it can never happen again.

Inspection and maintenance is a significant source of errors, though. Nobody wants to disassemble an entire plane when a single part develops a well-isolated failure.

Air Transat Flight 236 had its engine swapped out with a spare during routine maintenance. However, the engines had a different "patch level", leading to them installing a hydraulic hose with the wrong length. This hose rubbed on the fuel line leading it to develop a leak. The subsequent flight ran out of fuel halfway over the Atlantic, and they narrowly avoided having to ditch it into the ocean.

American Airlines Flight 4439 was done on an aircraft with a faulty trim switch. Prior to the flight, maintenance engineers wanted to replace it, but this was cancelled mid-process due to the time required to acquire a replacement part. They re-installed the switch and marked it as inoperable - which is not an issue as - despite the switch being safety-critical - there are two other trim switches available. However, the faulty trim switch was reinstalled backwards, and the pilot still tried to use it due to muscle memory. This nearly lead to a pilot-induced stall.

There are literally dozens of stories like that. In aviation, there is no room for error.

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

#297

Post by thaumasiotes »

labster wrote: post #172
CamperBob2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be better for safety? One $10000 light bulb, or ten $10 light bulbs?

Compared to the cost of an air incident, $9900 is a rounding error. You’d need an actuary to know for sure, but even small differences in safety margin can be worth the cost in aviation.

> Compared to the cost of an air incident, $9900 is a rounding error.

Doesn't matter; that's not a comparison that's relevant to any decision here.

How many additional crashes per year are prevented by the high-cost bulbs, and how many additional dollars per year does it cost to install them on every building?

Maybe the 10 $10 light bulbs need to be replaced once a year and they cost $150 / year. Maybe the one $10,000 bulb needs to be replaced every 15 years and costs $900 / year. Once you've gotten to that point, at least you know what the cost difference is.

Then you can either ask "how many planes would crash into the Chrysler building every year if it was using 10 bulbs from Home Depot, compared to the one bulb it's currently using?", and compare that to $750. In that case you'd get an answer that told you whether the Chrysler building should use a special bulb. Or you could ask "how many planes would crash into buildings anywhere in the world every year if they all used 10 bulbs from Home Depot instead of what they currently use?", compare that to $750 multiplied by the number of tall buildings in the world, and you'd get an answer that would tell you whether it'd be better for every building in the world to use commodity bulbs or for all of them to use the bespoke bulbs.

But you'd never ask "which costs more, one fancy lightbulb or one crashing plane?". That won't tell you anything.

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

#298

Post by philjohn »

dylan604 wrote: post #104

DELTA1943: "Alright, and uh, woof!" ATC: "Delta 1943, are you able to taxi or do you need a couple of minutes to run checks?" DELTA1943: "Yeah, we can get off the runway" but they're all going to need a change of underwear!! And I thought the Brits were known for understatement!

I'm always reminded of the announcement the pilot of BA 009 made when all four engines had failed:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

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

#299

Post by O__________O »

Once flying into NYC after passing over the end of the runway to land the plane pulled up super hard back into cursing altitude for landing. Once we leveled off, pilot came on to say, “Sorry about that folks, there was a plane taking off.” - Guess I always assumed this was a common issue.

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

#300

Post by rmccue »

user3939382 wrote: post #200

I had a sort-of hobby of learning and listening to ATC at one point. Some of these guys were scary-unintelligible . I remember this Chinese ATC at some major airport saying as fast as he possibly could “clah de leh” which was supposed to be “Clear to land”. It’s amazing the system works as well as it does.

Worth keeping in mind that recordings of ATC are taken from people running ground stations, which may not have perfect line-of-sight to the transmitter at the airport, so recordings can be lower quality and more garbled than what the pilots are actually hearing.
Post reply on HN