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I’m just an avid ATC listener. I’m not a pilot, air traffic controller, or anything of the sort. I could very well completely off base. With that massive discla

I’m just an avid ATC listener. I’m not a pilot, air traffic controller, or anything of the sort. I could very well completely off base. With that massive disclaimer out of the way, some of these changes really do come across as “we need to change something” meddling.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
isolli 3y ago
I couldn't tell in this case, but sometimes it is also definitely useful [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Lega...
makeitdouble 3y ago
There's the whole Ishikawa situation going on taking up the news in Japan, so I think there's very little pressure for them to just appear to be doing something. On the other hand, they might be suspecting something, and apply this change as a stopgap just in case, even if they later settle down on another cause.
- donalhunt 3y ago
  When dealing with incidents where there is no clear root cause, it's often advisable to implement guard rails to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of a repeat occurrence. As a result, this seems like a sane change.
ajross 3y ago
Pretty much. If you have human controllers and human pilots, eventually someone's going to misunderstand an instruction. It happens every day all over the world. The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. Obviously the primary backstop is supposed to be the pilots. The Dash 8 should have been listening to other traffic on that control frequency and should have known that there was an aircraft on final for that runway. The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Because pilots know that it is incredibly hard or impossible to see an airplane lined up on the runway. By lighted we mean that the turboprop had the required lights on the end of the wings and the end of the tail. Otherwise the airplane is totally black, on a totally black runway. Simply it is very easy to not notice the extra lights among all the lights of the runway. The pattern you are trying to notice is 3 extra lights among many, and a small gap in the runway lights where they are obstructed. > The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. We know a solution for this. ASDE-X(Airport Surface Detection System) is a set of sensors (radars mostly) integrated together to monitor the ground movements of aircraft and automatically report deviations such as runway incursions. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x
- CPLX 3y ago
  > The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Have you ever flown a plane? You're essentially blind to objects directly in front of and below you. That's also true in a car of course, but there's a lot more ground below you when you're flying a plane.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    From my experience, people who don’t know what they are talking about love to talk about pilot error and assign blame to the humans in the cockpit. You don’t see that often when reading experienced commenters who know that there should be 10 safety systems and features to prevent mistakes from getting catastrophic. Admiral Cloudberg’s analyses for example discuss at length the failures of all the mechanisms that allowed the crash to happen. It’s never “pilot need to git gud”. (Well, almost never, it was very nearly that for the recent Yeti Airlines crash).
- 3y ago
JackFr 3y ago
Forget air traffic control - who new ground control was so difficult and fraught with danger.
- myself248 3y ago
  I happened to watch this video last night, which goes into some of the details of RIMCAS, the Runway Incursion Monitoring and Conflict Alert System, and how it failed to alert to a dangerous situation a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

isolli 3y ago

I couldn't tell in this case, but sometimes it is also definitely useful [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Lega...

makeitdouble 3y ago

There's the whole Ishikawa situation going on taking up the news in Japan, so I think there's very little pressure for them to just appear to be doing something. On the other hand, they might be suspecting something, and apply this change as a stopgap just in case, even if they later settle down on another cause.

donalhunt 3y ago
When dealing with incidents where there is no clear root cause, it's often advisable to implement guard rails to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of a repeat occurrence. As a result, this seems like a sane change.

ajross 3y ago

Pretty much. If you have human controllers and human pilots, eventually someone's going to misunderstand an instruction. It happens every day all over the world. The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. Obviously the primary backstop is supposed to be the pilots. The Dash 8 should have been listening to other traffic on that control frequency and should have known that there was an aircraft on final for that runway. The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them.

krisoft 3y ago
> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Because pilots know that it is incredibly hard or impossible to see an airplane lined up on the runway. By lighted we mean that the turboprop had the required lights on the end of the wings and the end of the tail. Otherwise the airplane is totally black, on a totally black runway. Simply it is very easy to not notice the extra lights among all the lights of the runway. The pattern you are trying to notice is 3 extra lights among many, and a small gap in the runway lights where they are obstructed. > The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. We know a solution for this. ASDE-X(Airport Surface Detection System) is a set of sensors (radars mostly) integrated together to monitor the ground movements of aircraft and automatically report deviations such as runway incursions. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x
CPLX 3y ago
> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Have you ever flown a plane? You're essentially blind to objects directly in front of and below you. That's also true in a car of course, but there's a lot more ground below you when you're flying a plane.
- kergonath 3y ago
  From my experience, people who don’t know what they are talking about love to talk about pilot error and assign blame to the humans in the cockpit. You don’t see that often when reading experienced commenters who know that there should be 10 safety systems and features to prevent mistakes from getting catastrophic. Admiral Cloudberg’s analyses for example discuss at length the failures of all the mechanisms that allowed the crash to happen. It’s never “pilot need to git gud”. (Well, almost never, it was very nearly that for the recent Yeti Airlines crash).
3y ago

JackFr 3y ago

Forget air traffic control - who new ground control was so difficult and fraught with danger.

myself248 3y ago
I happened to watch this video last night, which goes into some of the details of RIMCAS, the Runway Incursion Monitoring and Conflict Alert System, and how it failed to alert to a dangerous situation a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU