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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

#381

Post by cm2187 »

sgent wrote: post #374
dghlsakjg wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Maybe I am thick but I am not sure I got your point. You mean he would wait 2min off the runway? Why, vortex created by larger planes?

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

#382

Post by plaguepilled »

hef19898 wrote: post #102
plaguepilled wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree with the notion this adds a degree of failure. From a layman's perspective, it replaces one primary degree (pilot-control coordination) with another (a technological solution) and delegates the staffers to supervisory roles. That is a risk reduction due to the increase of confirmations and the independence between the staff decision and the software's decision.

If you talk about something like aviation, and start with "from layman's perspective", stopping there is usually not such a bad idea.

Great burn! But not a great refutation.

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

#383

Post by King-Aaron »

krisoft wrote: post #204
King-Aaron wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining, and what kind of inane line of questioning is that.

> what kind of inane line of questioning is that A very pertinent one. The comment you responded to talked about how aviation achieves their stellar safety record. You told us that in your other industry (now we know it is mining) things are done differently. So it is fair to ask: How is that going for you? What are the results? Are you safer or less safe than aviation?

Our operations are amongst the safest in the world for our sector, so yes, it is going well.

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

#384

Post by Schroedingersat »

amluto wrote: post #336
hef19898 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less the only real Six Sigma safe industry humanity managed to create. And still, every incident turns everyone into safety and procedurural experts, even before the official incident reports are done. As much as this frustrates me, it has always been like that, and always will be like that.

Nuclear power is also extremely safe.

^1 At the point and time of power generation. Safety may not apply if your ground water was poisoned by a Uranium mine. If your town happens to have its cancer rates triple you probably started smoking or something. You will not be eligiblefor compensation.

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

#385

Post by xpe »

hitekker wrote: post #35
xpe wrote: post #16

The top of the article: > ‘As bad as it gets without body bags.’ > Why the Austin airport situation was so dangerous. Because the planes almost collided. But the author wants to say more than that. The article covers the “how” things went wrong by analyzing the transcript. The write-up doesn’t answer the key ”why” question —- why are existing procedures and training not suitable? Safety-critical systems (including pr…

The author didn't point fingers at anyone. He was explicit that the investigators will do the job of finding out the "why". His tone is entirely appropriate given that, if the FedEx operators had not went above and beyond, we would have seen a mass casualty event at Austin's airport. Accusing the author of blaming individuals is rather silly when you're rushing to blame training/procedures/the system.

> The author didn't point fingers at anyone.

I didn't say he did. (I was referring to comments here on HN.)

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

#386

Post by xpe »

CyberKimura wrote: post #351
blantonl wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known in the ATC community that this tower controller that was responsible for this incident was a problem child. He had been shuttled multiple times between facilities as a poor performer and was well known for filling EO complaints against the FAA for performance actions taken against him.

So it's someone crying racism every time they are disciplined. A position that can kill tons of people with one wrong move should not be able to do this.

On what basis are you saying this? Please, let's not jump to conclusions without evidence.

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

#387

Post by xpe »

hitekker wrote: post #35
xpe wrote: post #16

The top of the article: > ‘As bad as it gets without body bags.’ > Why the Austin airport situation was so dangerous. Because the planes almost collided. But the author wants to say more than that. The article covers the “how” things went wrong by analyzing the transcript. The write-up doesn’t answer the key ”why” question —- why are existing procedures and training not suitable? Safety-critical systems (including pr…

The author didn't point fingers at anyone. He was explicit that the investigators will do the job of finding out the "why". His tone is entirely appropriate given that, if the FedEx operators had not went above and beyond, we would have seen a mass casualty event at Austin's airport. Accusing the author of blaming individuals is rather silly when you're rushing to blame training/procedures/the system.

> ... blaming individuals is rather silly when you're rushing to blame training/procedures/the system.

I see your point. I am not ruling out individual culpability.

Still, by the time a person is in a cockpit or a control tower, they have a history, a record of performance. It is part of the system's responsibility to evaluate this record.

So I am less likely to blame an individual only, because to do so would require the individual to act in a way that no system could predict, mitigate, or compensate for.

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

#388

Post by dghlsakjg »

cm2187 wrote: post #381
sgent wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Maybe I am thick but I am not sure I got your point. You mean he would wait 2min off the runway? Why, vortex created by larger planes?

Yeah. Turbulence from a large plane can affect small planes in really dangerous ways, and it can exist for up to 2 minutes.

So if a large plane has just used a runway, small planes will wait before taking off, whether that’s on the runway or off the side on a taxiway is up to the pilot and the tower controller.

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

#389

Post by mixdup »

blitzar wrote: post #177
sfeng wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very likely the Southwest pilots were completing a checklist, programming their flight computer, or some other minor pre-takeoff activity before being ready to takeoff. A minute just isn't all that much of a delay. If the controller needed it to happen immediately, they should have first asked if the plane was ready, and then should have issued a takeoff clearance with 'without delay' or 'immediate' in it. Only…

As a passenger that flys almost exclusively long haul from very busy airports, it is rare that my plane will come to rest on the runway, generally accelerating in the turn onto the runway and taking off.

There is zero evidence that happened. They could absolutely have been sitting at the threshold to the runway for those 60 seconds and immediately took off when they turned the corner 60 seconds later

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

#390

Post by throwaway290 »

bambax wrote: post #192
zackbloom wrote: post #123

Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time. In this case, the c…

The linked article (more interesting than this one IMHO) asks > Why were they arriving and departing on the same runway when parallels were available? and it's a good question! If there's more than one runway available, and bad visibility, why make two planes use the same runway so close to one another?? https://vannevar.blogspot.com/2023/02/austin-fedexdal-disast...

Perhaps they had not much traffic that day and wanted to keep one runway busier to save on maintenance or something.
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