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Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

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Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#61

Post by KyeRussell »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #52
hn_user2 wrote: post #43

For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course. The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cr…

Why are the lights expensive?

Just assume that whenever something involves a plane it costs at least an order of magnitude more :). Nothing on a runway is cheap.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#62

Post by krisoft »

madrox wrote: post #33
Nicksil wrote: post #14

Earlier 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.

> "near collision" implies the very close passing of two objects

Near collision is not about inches of distance. It is how close we got to an accident happening. If the timing were a little bit different, or someone noticed things a little bit late, or the weather were a bit foggier, or the runway a bit slipperier we could have two burning wrecks and everyone on-board dead.

“Near collision” is exactly right here. So many things went wrong here, and the fact that everything turned out fine were up to chance. That is we come near to a collision happening.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#63

Post by saalweachter »

blackshaw wrote: post #41
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Near collision" in this case is perfectly ordinary english phrasing. It does not assert a collision happened.

Unless you ask George Carlin: https://youtu.be/zDKdvTecYAM

Without re-watching the video in question, wasn't Carlin's complaint about a "near miss"? A "near collision" is everything he asked for.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#64

Post by sixQuarks »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
hn_user2 wrote: post #43

For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course. The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cr…

If this doesn’t provide evidence for funding the install of RWSL at that intersection, I don’t know what does. What would’ve been the cost of loss of life and both airframes? Tens of millions at a minimum. Edit: thank you for correcting my damages estimate, I was off by at least an order of magnitude.

Each plane costs more than $150 million, plus at least 300 lives could have been lost. Damages probably close to a billion at least

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#65

Post by azalemeth »

precommunicator wrote: post #54
blackshaw wrote: post #44

What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?

In aviation post-event reports penalizing humans has usually the least priority, unless they intentionally violated the rules. If they did so unintentionally, or because they made a mistake, usually the entire industry gets better trainings, and/or system to prevent such. I'm generalizing here a lot.

Indeed. Punishing people for making human mistakes causes them to hide them, feel ashamed, and not highlight issues that may affect others. Aviation has fostered (very specifically) an open culture of inquisition to errors: it's assumed that if one qualified pilot made a mistake, any qualified pilot could make the same mistake under the same circumstances. If anything, you're actively encouraged to report things that are either confusing, or situations when you nearly made a mistake – the gliding club I spent a lot of time at in the past explicitly encouraged issues to be reported and put them in their monthly newsletter. Root cause analysis is a wonderful thing, and sometimes very convoluted and interesting.

I'm sure the outcome of this event will probably be a technical mitigation of some variety to attempt to stop it happening again.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#67

Post by Symbiote »

christophilus wrote: post #48

The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.

I've experienced maximum breaking in an emergency landing.

Many passengers (including me) instinctively put their hands on the seat in front to steady themselves. You could easily slide around if the seat belt were loose.

It was it worst for children whose legs didn't reach the floor, but there were none seated near me.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#68

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

crooked-v wrote: post #7
pedalpete wrote: post #6

Are 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…

> 1) Google maps style directions input by air traffic control showing as well as telling the pilot what runway/path to runway to take. Now you've added one more thing for the pilot to look at instead of actually looking out the windows.

Head-up display? Augmented reality?

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#69

Post by echelon »

sixQuarks wrote: post #64
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this doesn’t provide evidence for funding the install of RWSL at that intersection, I don’t know what does. What would’ve been the cost of loss of life and both airframes? Tens of millions at a minimum. Edit: thank you for correcting my damages estimate, I was off by at least an order of magnitude.

Each plane costs more than $150 million, plus at least 300 lives could have been lost. Damages probably close to a billion at least

Each human life is worth approximately $10 million [1], so you're in the right ballpark.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

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