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‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

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Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#341

Post by rodface »

CrackpotGonzo wrote: post #333
blantonl wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Source?

The source is a Reddit thread, the veracity of the comments is up to you.

https://tinyurl.com/redditlinknoswearword

Adding comment text in case of deletion:

"This is the problem right here. You have a controller who, according to everyone who has worked with him from the last facility where he washed out and now AUS, say has no business being a controller and they can't fire him because he files EEO complaints habitually. And yet you have people trying to push another agenda entirely with the 6 day work weeks and fatigue, which this event has nothing to do with."

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#342

Post by ninjagoo »

blantonl wrote: post #284
ninjagoo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Austin has been adding > 50k people annually to its population over the past many years, and now is > 2.2 Million people in the Metro area, it might be time to upgrade KAUS from Class C to Class B, or at least started on that path. KSTL (St. Louis) and KMCI (Kansas City) are Class B, and at 10M and 7M carry fewer passengers than KAUS at 13M annually and have half the number of operations annually [1] [2].…

Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS. KSTL and KMCI were formal airline hubs and are still Class B most likely due to legacy assignments. It's a lot harder for the FAA to "demote" a piece of airspace vs "promote" one. I'm curious as to what you think upgrading KAUS to Class B would exactly accomplish, especially in this scenario? This was a runway localized mistake by the controller. Also, t…

> Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS

Under certain circumstances > 220k annual ops qualifies an airport for Class B status [1]. Austin's 2022 vs 2021 traffic is significantly higher [2]. When you include KEDC (Austin Exec Airport) and KGTU (Georgetown Municipal), the traffic certainly appears to exceeds the thresholds in question [3][4][5]. I didn't bother to look through the other airports within the area.

> I'm curious as to what you think upgrading KAUS to Class B would exactly accomplish, especially in this scenario? This was a runway localized mistake by the controller. Also, the word in the ATC community is this tower controller had been moved around the NAS multiple times as a problem child.

Designation as a Class B changes the care with which the airspace is managed and more importantly, staffed [6][7]. Perhaps the problem ATC is fine for a less busy area, perhaps the Tower staffing could use a little more oomph in the morning hours. There might also be additional RWLS and ARIWS requirements for Class B airports (needs regulatory research - maybe ChatGPT can give us pointers since this is all supposed to be public info!).

> KSAT's airspace (not the airport, the airspace) farther south is FAR busier than KAUS and is considered some of the busiest airspace in the county due to multiple military fields in the area, extensive military training, etc. And it's also Class C airspace.

The FAA Sectional for KSAT (San Antonio) shows that there are multiple Special Use Airspaces (Randolph, Laughlin, Crystal/North, Kingsville MOAs) to separate the civilian traffic from military airspace, and the military has their own controllers [8]. Caution: 111MB file.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/pham_htm... [2] https://www.austintexas.gov/news/november-2022-passenger-car... [3] https://www.gcr1.com/5010ReportRouter/EDC.pdf [4] https://www.gcr1.com/5010ReportRouter/GTU.pdf [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_Municipal_Airport [6] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/pham_htm... [7] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/pham_htm... [8] https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/02-23-2023/PDFs/San_Antonio.p...

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#343

Post by jonathanyc »

idiotsecant wrote: post #330
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to complain about the safety of airplane even though it is in the top echelon of safe modes of transit. There's no reason to try to reach the highest-hanging fruit trying to make it even safer when people are dying in droves on the road just getting to the airport. Much better to do something about that low-hanging fruit.

This doesn't make much sense, IMO. Road safety and air travel safety are orthogonal tasks. We can and should do both things.

Putting out a housefire and going to the dentist are also orthogonal tasks. GP’s point is very clearly that we should budget limited political will.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#344

Post by ninjagoo »

cjrp wrote: post #309
ninjagoo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Commercial pressures. Holding for Fedex would have added a few mins They spent a minute extra before starting their takeoff roll; it wouldn't have hurt to wait an additional 5 minutes. Commercial flights build in a generous margin for ground ops these days. I doubt this was a factor in this specific case. > maybe lost them their place in the queue, etc. They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to ha…

> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1]. Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).

>> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].

> Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).

This routing appears to require the SouthWest aircraft to enter the active runway with FedEx Heavy on Final to that end, presumably the problem we're trying to avoid ...

In both cases, SW would be well within their rights to say "unable to comply".

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#345

Post by blantonl »

ninjagoo wrote: post #342
blantonl wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS. KSTL and KMCI were formal airline hubs and are still Class B most likely due to legacy assignments. It's a lot harder for the FAA to "demote" a piece of airspace vs "promote" one. I'm curious as to what you think upgrading KAUS to Class B would exactly accomplish, especially in this scenario? This was a runway localized mistake by the controller. Also, t…

> Class B criteria is > 300K operations annually - ~200K is KAUS Under certain circumstances > 220k annual ops qualifies an airport for Class B status [1]. Austin's 2022 vs 2021 traffic is significantly higher [2]. When you include KEDC (Austin Exec Airport) and KGTU (Georgetown Municipal), the traffic certainly appears to exceeds the thresholds in question [3][4][5]. I didn't bother to look through the other airport…

I fly in this airspace. (KAUS and KSAT and KDFW)

KAUS might be the most classic example of Class C airspace in existence. They only have 3 App/Dep positions with a spare 4th, and the top of the charlie is 4500 feet. I can overfly that in a light sport.

Austin airspace isn't nearly as busy as you make it out to be.

And in the context of this incident, arguing that KAUS needs to be upgraded to a Class B is kind of non-sequitur. A class B wouldn't solve anything except to make the area airspace wildly more restrictive.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#346

Post by dsfyu404ed »

xwolfi wrote: post #314
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't even have the opportunity to make these peanut gallery potshots if those overly optimistic Yankees took the British/French/German route and did not give the general public access to ATC recordings.

I can agree that the american transparency is a model, even if it fails some rare times (what I hate the most is when they do the whole circus around a terrible lie, with all the appearance of transparent government, but it's rare enough to be forgiven). Not sure what is has to do with the initial problem that spawned the transparent mea culpa though, which is due to a sort of reckless optimism and an inability to lo…

I didn't say "at least we're not as bad as the French". I said you don't know how bad the French (or whoever) are because they don't share the same level of details.

If you bothered to comprehend what I wrote I'm pretty much advocating the opposite of American exceptionalism. The accident rate is pretty close across the first world. Why would the close call rate be substantially different?

Thank god aviation policy isn't dictated by people like you who have an ideological bone to pick.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#347

Post by barelyauser »

idiotsecant wrote: post #334
zmgsabst wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Google numbers: There’s 16M flights per year, so saving 5 minutes each is 80M minutes, which corresponds to 160 years. A plane crash will kill about 160 people; so if one happens every twenty years, then we’ll have saved lives if the average age is over 50 (within 20 years of natural death) and lost lives otherwise. Personally, seems a bad gamble.

I'm not sure a one to one comparison here is appropriate, either. The fundamental argument that 1 minute of wasted time is equivalent to 1 minute of life seems tricky. To prove this is easy, simply ask yourself if you'd rather take a day off your life or spend a day waiting in line at the DMV. I think you'll find that most people would rather still be alive and at the DMV. Loss of life is not equivalent to loss of ti…

It is the same thing. Life is finite. You will live every minute, but you better not waste most of them. Last thing you want is to run out of time and not done the things you wanted.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#348

Post by lowkey_ »

krisoft wrote: post #208
michaelmrose wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. In the linked communication you can see that he knew both planes were incoming on the same runway and confirmed his brain dead plan repeatedly to both crews. Even telling SW that the…

> That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. Let's assume that you are right. I don't think I can be as confident about anything as you are. Especially not before an investigation, but let's pretend that you are right: the co…

> How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that?

If you see r/ATC, he's been shuffled between locations and this isn't his first screw-up. He manages to stay employed through claiming discrimination under EEO when performance issues come up. There's even another past incident from another airport featuring him.

Luckily, this may be the nail in the coffin that even US Critical Race Theory policies can't prevent, and it happened without any loss of life.

From the responses of those who have worked ATC, lazy & incompetent would be more accurate than idiot. He sounds checked out, and isn't really thinking about his choices.

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#349

Post by thfuran »

phpisthebest wrote: post #326
thfuran wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you shouldn't be involved in safety-critical areas. That's just entirely the wrong outlook. You should never skip an important verification step because someone promises things are fine.

yes, Freedom, Personal autonomy, Privacy, and Innocence until proven guilty are all the "entirely the wrong outlook " and people holding that "wrong outlook" clearly can not be anywhere near "safety-critical areas" that is just absurd, Safety Theater is basically what you are advocating for Let me ask you this, do you think forcing me to remove my shoes is a "critical safety" process before boarding a plan, and that…

So, you're advocating for permitting ATCs to just decide to start transmitting in cockney rhymes as an expression of their personal freedom and autonomy and for people to be able to walk around town pointing loaded guns at other peoples' faces with their fingers on the trigger?

Re: ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin

#350

Post by mint2 »

jonathanyc wrote: post #343
idiotsecant wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make much sense, IMO. Road safety and air travel safety are orthogonal tasks. We can and should do both things.

Putting out a housefire and going to the dentist are also orthogonal tasks. GP’s point is very clearly that we should budget limited political will.

The patient has an abscessed cavity, they must evacuate the house and go to a dentist. Both after all.
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