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So from the ATC recordings it seems like everyone was made aware of the traffic, i.e. the Southwest flight acknowledged there was an approach 3 miles out and Fe
by peeters 4y ago
So from the ATC recordings it seems like everyone was made aware of the traffic, i.e. the Southwest flight acknowledged there was an approach 3 miles out and FedEx acknowledged the 737 ahead of them. i.e. it's not like the ATC forgot it gave one clearance or the other. So it seems like the Southwest takeoff took longer than expected and ATC lost track of the situation and thus did not revoke clearance to one or the other? This is not me assigning blame just trying to get a sense of the context.
Edit: in the tower comms the Tower asks Southwest to confirm it's on the roll just 16 seconds before the call from FedEx for Southwest to abort takeoff. Incredible the tight margins these guys play with to keep things moving at the airport. People are speculating the tower had no visibility of the runway traffic due to weather.
- diebeforei485 4y agoCan you link to the ATC recordings? (Or the timestamp, if it's only available as part of a much a longer recording on LiveATC)?)
- dmix 4y agohttps://archive.liveatc.net/kaus/KAUS3-Twr-Feb-04-2023-1230Z.mp3 https://archive.liveatc.net/kaus/KAUS3-Twr-Feb-04-2023-1230Z... https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1481281#p23660359 https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1481281#...
- ec109685 4y agoGiven flight radar exits, why isn’t it possible to identify these situations in real-time reliably and alert there is a possible problem?
- dmix 4y agoFrom the linked twitter thread: > For starters visibility was down to 1/8th of a mile. So tower likely never saw how close this was. Second off apparently Austin does not have ground radar. Regardless of that though this is the second near catastrophic accident we’ve had in two weeks or so here in the US alone.
- photonbeam 4y agoIm surprised that radars arent an expectation for airports with big jets
- x3n0ph3n3 4y agoTo be clear, he's referring to _ground_ radar which tracks positions of aircraft on the ground. They all have radar monitoring nearby airspace.
- TrickyRick 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster We've learned the lesson once already that not having ground radar is a bad idea.
- Retric 4y agoI think the million flights after that point suggests otherwise. Technology isn’t the only option, proper procedures can also work.
- Sakos 4y agoIt would interest me to know what the reasons are for ground radar not being more widespread and how many accidents are preventable by ground radar yearly. My first guess is that incidents where ground radar would've prevented them are so rare that it isn't worth the expense or the additional complexity or additional point of failure, and it's more productive/effective to solve the issue at different points in the system instead.
- TrickyRick 4y agoThis is like saying "I don't wear my seatbelt because I've never been in an accident". Safety systems isn't about one or the other, it's about having multiple systems and procedures in place to prevent a disaster. Proper procedures are good, and it's a first line of defense, but humans make mistakes and are imperfect in other ways (Such as not being able to see through fog). Proper procedure in the case of near 0 visibility would be to greatly increase separation between planes, something which wasn't done in this case, and something which would slow down traffic a lot more than passengers and companies like.
- hugh-avherald 4y agoNothing currently comes close to human intuition for reliably detecting these sorts of collisions. Fundamentally when a plane is on final at an airport that's even remotely busy it's always on a collision course with planes on the runway taking off or landing.
- peeters 4y agoThese systems exist (STCA/RIMCAS for the tower, TCAS for the pilots, but not around landing), and for all we know at this point they might have helped avoid a collision. The challenge is balancing giving useful alerts while not feeding the pilots noise at the point that you want them to be absolutely dialed in.
- karmakaze 4y agoHow close they put the traffic reminds me of "Pushing Tin". Great movie with perhaps more bits of truth to it (perhaps in the past) than we want to know.