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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

#371

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#372

Post by rtkwe »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #283
blantonl wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For operations on a specific runway, yes. Departing and arriving traffic on the same runway use the same frequency (called "Tower"). Some airports will have a single "Tower" frequency that controls all arriving and department traffic on all runways. Some larger airports will have multiple "Tower" frequencies that cover certain runway(s). But a single runway will always have departing and arriving traffic working on t…

makes sense; thanks. So in airport with multiple "Towers", an approaching aircraft is contacted (on a preset freq?) while still a ways out, and instructed to switch to a given "Tower" frequency on approach? (Same with departing planes)

Generally planes do the initial contact to airports on the approach frequency and get handed over to the appropriate next frequency as needed. The frequencies are set and static for a particular airport with alternatives available if there's some issue with the standard one. AFAIK planes are told which frequencies to contact on the whole way by whatever previous controller had them.

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

#373

Post by mhb »

mcv wrote: post #370
mhb wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's your reasoning, then you don't understand what money is. It's a proxy for other things. Saying you're doing something with "an eye on money rather than safety" is meaningless. Substitute whatever else the money could have bought. E.g., doing something with "an eye on apartment building safety rather than aviation safety". Then you can have a discussion.

Do airlines invest their profits into apartment safety?

Of course not, silly. The airline's owners do.

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

#374

Post by sgent »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #300
cm2187 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Used to fly out of MEM in the co-pilot seat when it was still a hub for NWA. Usually, the small planes they lined up on an alternative runway, but occasionally wind direction / strength required using one of the two (now three) parallel runways.

More than once I remember a 747, 777 or A340 taking off and getting the call "cleared for immediate departure". The pilot I was with routinely would say something like "I'm not even taxing onto the runway for 2 minutes, then we can talk".

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

#375

Post by doctor_eval »

hef19898 wrote: post #287
doctor_eval wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with a layman’s perspective in any industry, and aerospace is not certainly not the sole domain of safety critical systems. An aerospace layman might still bring insight from other areas, which was the case here IMO. You have been repeatedly dismissing people in this thread, but HN is about being curious. “Leave it to the professionals” is neither satisfying nor interesting.

Curiosity is about learning, isn't it? Nothing wrong with asking questions, or following discussions and learn something new about an industry or domain you don't know a lot about. Throwing ideas out to improve things, without properly thinking about the the root causes for incidents, not waiting for official investigations to be run, and all of that based on some audio recordings and headlines, or news coverage at b…

How are we supposed to learn if you just tell everyone to “leave it to the professionals”?

If you don’t agree with something someone posts, contribute to the discussion by explaining the issues. Why shouldn’t the ATC be sacked? Safety culture. Why shouldn’t they install ground radar? Complexity. Etc.

Appeals to authority are the worst kind of arguments because they don’t help us to understand what to expect from them.

Just think of it as CRM for the internet. :)

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

#376

Post by doctor_eval »

justsid wrote: post #365
doctor_eval wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming situational awareness, but they would have been running checklists preparing for takeoff, and may not have heard how far away the fedex was. I didn’t think they took overly long, and they weren’t instructed to hurry.

The Southwest flight announced that they are ready after presumably holding short of the runway to do exactly what you just said. ATC also informed them that there was a 767 3 miles out right after reading the take off clearance. The Southwest crew read back the take off clearance, so presumably they also heard the bit about the other plane. Even without being instructed to expedite the departure, they should at leas…

Totally agree we should wait for the investigation. It’s going to be very interesting.

To your point though, we also don’t know what was going on in the cockpit of the 737. Even if they were aware of how close the FedEx jet was, it’s entirely possible something went wrong that caused them to delay the takeoff roll (assuming it was delayed).

There are plenty of things that could have gone wrong on the ground. Separating traffic is the ATCs job and clearly there was a loss of separation. Very hard for me to see how this could be Southwest’s problem particularly since they weren’t yet airborne.

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

#377

Post by dghlsakjg »

jameshart wrote: post #353
dghlsakjg wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I have bad news for you. If the FAA were contemplating adjusting the requirements for certain classes of airport or the rules applicable under certain conditions at certain classes of airport, that perhaps airport operators and airlines whose costs and operations might be impacted by such a change can take part in a process called lobbying where they apply pressure to the regulator to make sure those changes don’t ad…

You've got it backwards.

Airlines are generally the ones asking for these safety upgrades before anyone else. They would love if every airport had Cat. III approaches on every runway, and there were designated parallel runways at every airport.

Airlines like higher classed airports since it frequently means the ability to handle more traffic safely, and better service from ATC.

Opposition to airspace changes are ALWAYS nimby's. ALWAYS. Go look at the public comments for any proposed change.

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

#378

Post by throw0101c »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #165

I 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…

> 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".

In ICAO phraseology, "cleared to land runway 08" is allowed. Further:

> If the runway is obstructed when the aircraft reports ‘final’, but it is expected to be available in good time for the aircraft to make a safe landing, the controller will delay landing clearance by issuing an instruction to ‘continue approach’.

* https://www.skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/115....

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

#379

Post by albrewer »

phpisthebest wrote: post #294
bilekas wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sus…

I disagree with this take when it comes to safety-critical applications, especially when you are directly responsible for the safety of thousands of lives at any given moment in the day.

At the end of the day, I don't see potentially sacrificing the lives of multiple planeloads of people as a worthy tradeoff for foregoing verification that the controller is not under the influence of mind-altering substances when performing their job because it invades their privacy. Performing the job must inherently be approached with a collectivist attitude.

For other jobs where the magnitude of the mistake doesn't involve bodily harm or significant resources, I agree 100%.

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

#380

Post by CWuestefeld »

CydeWeys wrote: post #301
coredog64 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PATCO went on an illegal strike, continued the strike in contravention of court orders, and then remained on strike after a deadline from the president. They could have returned prior to the final deadline, they could have had a sick-out, they could have worked to rule. I’m sympathetic to labor demands, but if your oath of office makes it illegal to strike and you participate in a walkout, well, that’s on you.

How convenient to make strikes illegal. That disarms the union of one of its most potent weapons in ensuring its members get their due.

In the private sector, I'd agree. But in the world of government services, where there's a legally-enforced monopoly, it's a very different story.
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