Here's a diagram of the taxi paths:
https://avherald.com/h?article=503c9620
- "Excerpt of Aerodrome Chart, red: actual taxi path, green: cleared taxi path (Graphics: AVH/FAA):"
Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
31–40 of 372 posts
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that there is a shit ton that is and always has been happening in this area. Air safety is the leading sector in standards for safety training. We are relying on checklists, procedures, surveillance tech, simulation training, certification, re-certification etc. etc. No other industry has put in as much thought into these problems. Except for maybe the military. Source: I had the opportunity to me…
Space flight is the one industry with a better track record I’d say.
I wonder by what metric this is true. For instance, I’m sure the fatality per flight of manned space flight is an order of magnitude worse than commercial air flight in the US.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#33[flagged]
>I hate that they call this having a "near-collision" >They came close to having a collision What? >but there was nothing like any sort of collision Because "near"
Not OP, but "near collision" implies the very close passing of two objects. These two planes did not come close. Instead, action was taken to avert an almost sure collision.
That said, this is all pedantic.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#34Are 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…
I worked at a startup on some of the earliest rollouts of Airport Collaborative Decision Making systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_Collaborative_Decision...
These are more about timing and throughput in airports, and less about safety critical stuff, and certainly there are new fancy navigation and runway lighting systems to help with that. But what I’ll say is that airports involve a huge number of different organisations, operating huge numbers of systems from different vendors, and until about 15 years ago there wasn’t much joining it all up end to end. To the point that a killer demo early on was merely putting the airport and all the planes on a real-time map. So, it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of the responsibility still falls on humans and processes.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I hate that they call this having a "near-collision" >They came close to having a collision What? >but there was nothing like any sort of collision Because "near"
Not OP, but "near collision" implies the very close passing of two objects. These two planes did not come close. Instead, action was taken to avert an almost sure collision. That said, this is all pedantic.
Distance is relative; for an aircraft about to take off, moving at 50m/s means that 1000ft is a short distance - obviously for a human walking it feels much further.
See e.g. stopping distances for car drivers at different speeds.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that there is a shit ton that is and always has been happening in this area. Air safety is the leading sector in standards for safety training. We are relying on checklists, procedures, surveillance tech, simulation training, certification, re-certification etc. etc. No other industry has put in as much thought into these problems. Except for maybe the military. Source: I had the opportunity to me…
Space flight is the one industry with a better track record I’d say.
It’s important to account for the frequency difference for these events. One of them has thousands of flights per day, the other not as many.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#37Are 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…
On 1:
While taxiing, you're supposed to have the taxiway map up (https://flightaware.com/resources/airport/JFK/APD/AIRPORT+DI...), and something like ForeFlight (which many pilots, GA and commercial, use) will alert you when you're approaching a runway as well as once you enter it. Not sure what the instruments in a 20+ year old 777 will have to help with this (likely the taxiway map, unsure if they'll alert on runway entrance).
On communication: most modern flight computers do support getting your IFR clearance from the FAA (see CPDLC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_... and Tower Data Link System: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/acf/medi...). This doesn't include taxi clearance.
Looks like ForeFlight and MITRE are working on bridging the gap (take the audio taxi clearance and overlay it on the map): https://www.mitre.org/news-insights/impact-story/runway-safe...
EDIT: here's a video of the feature in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5-7jVg8fE; looks like it's only on the most expensive plan though :/
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#38[flagged]
This is literally the opposite of a George Carlin joke.
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#39Is there any aggregation of near misses? How often do things like this happen?
A near miss is a collision. This was a near collision ;)
Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport
#40So we don't have computers anticipating the movements of airplanes, and giving warning signals if necessary?
We do but not to the extent that laypeople would think rational. Taxi instructions are verbal affairs. Hugely problematic in very busy airports. I will say that I am not sure how much automation would have helped. It does appear that this pilot had really lost situational awareness.
> It does appear that this pilot had really lost situational awareness.
Totally. The instructions were "taxi Bravo hold short of Kilo" and "cross 31L at Kilo"; read back was correct but instead of turning right at Kilo and crossing 31L, the pilot turned left, then right, and crossed 4L at Juliet.