Somebody is not going back into an air control seat without some re-training.
Guy is a known problem child. He's been shuttled around the NAS. He's finished.
‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
291–300 of 402 posts
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#292I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time. When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway. So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given "cleared approach runway 08" but never "cleared to land". Which a…
Europe uses pessimistic runway locks but the US prefers optimistic locks. This improves throughput at US airports with the risk of a rollback on a dirty runway.
It happened before dawn this past Saturday, in near zero-visibility conditions, [...] on a “Cat III” approach that allows an airliner to touch down safely even if the pilots cannot see the runway.
Seems like this would be a good trigger to switch temporarily to a more pessimistic strategy. (Caveat: I don't know anything about aviation.)
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are not involved directly with any of that professionally, it is better to treat it the way non-developer treat the OS. Assume it will work as intended because loads of highly trained professionals take care of it. Added benefit ehen it comes to aviation: strict and sensible regulation (the MAX disaster notwithstanding).
The aviation industry in the US is subject to federal regulation, meaning that the scope and purpose of its regulation is laid out by statutory authority granted to the FAA by laws passed by congress, who are elected by the people of America. In other words, aviation regulation exists to serve the interests of the people. If the airport or airline industry is trying to cut corners or save money at the expense of the…
The airport and the airlines don’t make any decisions about ATC. That is controlled entirely by the FAA. The airlines and airports don’t pay for it either (directly anyway)
They designate the class of an airport not by the number of people living in the metro area around it, but based on the complexity of the airspace and the density of the traffic.
Austin probably isn’t a class b because while it may be an airport for a large city it doesn’t see a ton of traffic as it isn’t a huge hub. The regional hubs in that area are DFW and Houston and are way more traffic.
It’s also worth noting that making a this a class B airport wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of how the arrivals and departures are controlled at the runway level.
In spite of what happened with Boeing, the FAA is usually very good at airspace safety.
That’s WHY this incident is notable.
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally think stability and having some bureaucrat monitoring hours is good. I don't want my air traffic controllers popping pills and pulling double shifts, or showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick. People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves
> showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick Much like air hosts and pilots, air traffic controllers (at least in the EU) are tested frequently for substance issues including alcohol. A friends father who was an air traffic controller was tested daily for the very reason you mention. Nobody WANTS an accident. > People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselv…
>>tested daily for the very reason you mention
Which also limits the hiring pool as many people, myself included, would refuse to be tested daily on principle. Hell I object to pre-employment screenings.
And I have not drunk a drop of Alcohol in over 25 years, nor done any drugs, dont smoke, nothing. That said I am not taking your little test to prove that to you unless you have a reasonable articulable reason to suspect I may be under said influence.
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what about the Southwest crew? The article says they waited a full minute between being cleared for take off and starting to roll. Surely they wouldn't assume the runway is the right place to hang around in a busy airport, planes typically take off straight away. If they do that it will eat into any safety margin.
The training I got as a lowly ppl, was that a takeoff clearance meant that the runway was yours to do with as you pleased within reason. If the southwest crew needed to sit on the runway for a few moments getting setup they had permission to do it. Their job is to follow atc directions, which they absolutely did. If the controller wanted you to do an immediate takeoff they normally make damn sure that you are able an…
But surely "within reason" includes some sort of timeout?
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#296Reminds me of a time in 1999 when a US Air crew at Rhode Island refused to takeoff in the fog when the controller insisted it was okay. Another aircraft had landed and was lost in the fog about their location, even saying they were on on an active runway and even said an aircraft just took off (over them). Animation + text here if curious: https://youtu.be/qUDFY5qlTSA
And OF COURSE the first YouTube comment I read blames this on Affirmative Action... JEEZ
believe it or not, this controller is a known problem child in the ATC world and has been shuttled around to multiple facilities all the while filing EO complaints against the FAA any time he was in trouble for anything.
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 2020, ATC directed an incoming United 787 on the wrong runway at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The only reason nothing terrible happened is that the Easyjet pilot on the wrong runway called for go-around after looking out the window, moments before the would-be collision. Didn't make it beyond aviation news, probably because recording ATC is not allowed in France. Human error will creep up everywhere, all you c…
ATC cannot be recorded? Where else is that the case?
People seem to believe other nations have freedom.. In reality when looking at it objectively Most nations lack a huge amount of core freedoms we in the US take for granted
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
One issue with that is that "aviation" includes a lot more than commercial airliners - it also includes inexpensive, Spartan general aviation aircraft. The cost of such a system would be prohibitive. Just look at the rollout for ADS-B In/Out if you're curious how difficult that might be to implement.
At least one of the planes in this situation was equipped with the system that lands the plane automatically in almost zero visibility. It’s not a stretch of imagination to see how that can extend to the system that tracks planes on approach to the airport and steering on the ground and extrapolates their trajectories at least for the typical braking/abort time forward. These are not general aviation, these are plane…
What you’re talking about is called a collision avoidance system and it exists and both of these planes have it.
It doesn’t alert you to planes on the ground because it would never stop going off. How is the system supposed to know that the pilot approaching the threshold as you land is going to stop? It can’t so it would issue an immediate correction alert and you have to go around.
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, no and no. Safety critical systems must be validated to be safe in the operational domain and for that they must be deterministic. AI is anything but that.
AI is entirely deterministic. ChatGPT and StableDiffusion and friends are fed endless amounts of random seeds along with every input to keep them from just saying always the same thing.
That's useless in this case. You need to be able to prove that it will work with all inputs, and there are too many combinations of inputs to exhaustively enumerate.
Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
The training I got as a lowly ppl, was that a takeoff clearance meant that the runway was yours to do with as you pleased within reason. If the southwest crew needed to sit on the runway for a few moments getting setup they had permission to do it. Their job is to follow atc directions, which they absolutely did. If the controller wanted you to do an immediate takeoff they normally make damn sure that you are able an…
But surely "within reason" includes some sort of timeout?
Kind of. It’s not unheard of for the plane to have issues on the runway. Flat tire, avionics settings, whatever. That causes you a delay on the runway, or to just have to sit there and close the runway
On a regular day the controller could see this, and ask what is going on. At a small GA airport with training ops the controller is likely used to people pulling out onto the runway and taking their god damn time. The FAA actually advises wait times of as long as 2 minutes for wake turbulence, and that’s something I’ve done. Just sit there on the end of a runway.
Things get a little different, in practice, at busy commercial airports, but the rules are the same.